Thu, Oct 1 2020, 10:58 AM
Fourth quarter already!? Was the third quarter of 2020 the best quarter ever to be in residential lending? Will the fourth quarter beat it? While much...
Thu, Oct 1 2020, 9:24 AM
Before we talk about anything remotely negative for the bond market, let's lay out some context. The technical ceiling in 10yr yields that we'll be e...
Wed, Sep 30 2020, 4:38 PM
Mortgage rates don't just magically appear . Lenders don't choose them arbitrarily. To sustain the pace and scope of the mortgage market in the US (an...
Wed, Sep 30 2020, 4:35 PM
Bonds Finally Make a Move. How Serious Is It?
After more than 2 months of a narrow sideways range and more t...
Wed, Sep 30 2020, 10:04 AM
Contracts for existing home purchases rose for the fourth straight month in August and more than doubled the increase expected by most analysts. The N...
Wed, Sep 30 2020, 9:58 AM
Welcome to the start of Fat Bear Week in Alaska. (There’s even a Park Service bracket with the favorites... expect upsets!) It’s probably easier to fo...
Wed, Sep 30 2020, 9:45 AM
There has been an uncanny amount of sideways momentum in the bond market for months. The range has grown even narrower over the past 3 weeks with ...
Wed, Sep 30 2020, 8:34 AM
Mortgage application volume has fallen into an up and down pattern over the last few weeks and last week went to the negative side. The Mortgage Banke...
Tue, Sep 29 2020, 4:00 PM
Treasury Consolidation Runs Out of Room, But MBS Keep Gaining
MBS continue to outperform due to favorable s...
Tue, Sep 29 2020, 3:59 PM
The average mortgage lender continues to offer top tier conventional 30yr fixed rates in the "high 2% to low 3%" neighborhood. Exactly where any given...
Tue, Sep 29 2020, 11:35 AM
The growth of home prices nationally continued to accelerate in July according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index. T...
Tue, Sep 29 2020, 9:37 AM
The absence of volatility in the bond market cannot be overemphasized at the moment, or during most any moment since mid August. Rather than drift to...
Tue, Sep 29 2020, 8:56 AM
Here's a brief video refresher of our tax code if anyone needs it. If eight months ago someone had told you to pick a country where there is a mudslin...
Mon, Sep 28 2020, 3:49 PM
Jobs Week. Now Can We Break The Range?
The end of the week brings the first Friday of the month (of October!...
Mon, Sep 28 2020, 11:56 AM
Non-conventional lending enjoyed a substantial increase in its share of the market for financing new home purchases in 2019. The National Association ...
Mon, Sep 28 2020, 9:33 AM
The end of the week brings the first Friday of the month (of October!) and thus the big jobs report--the economic data that has ruled all others thr...
Mon, Sep 28 2020, 8:54 AM
Thank you to those who wrote commenting about the Yelp study showing that 164,000 businesses across our nation have closed since March . “Bouncing bac...
Fri, Sep 25 2020, 3:50 PM
Mortgage Rate Update Considering this week's generally positive drift in rates, we shouldn't expect lenders to get less busy any time soon. In recent ...
Fri, Sep 25 2020, 3:50 PM
Treasuries, MBS Back on Same Page After 2 Weeks On Different Paths
MBS prices were generally losing ground, ...
Fri, Sep 25 2020, 10:55 AM
Black Knight said its weekly forbearance survey found the number of mortgages in active forbearance decreasing at an accelerated rate. Those mortgages...
Fri, Sep 25 2020, 10:09 AM
Bear with me while I'm forced to crank up the power on my analytical microscope in order to find anything interesting to say about one of the least vo...
Fri, Sep 25 2020, 9:44 AM
Freddie Mac reported this week that its total mortgage portfolio increased at an annualized rate of 27.7 percent in August compared to a 20.0 percent ...
Fri, Sep 25 2020, 9:37 AM
In its 2 nd quarter Foreclosure Prevention and Refinance Report the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) says it has helped almost 4.7 million distre...
Fri, Sep 25 2020, 9:13 AM
TGIF! Do Fridays mean as much as they did up until mid-March? Yes! Well, maybe. How about some non-mortgage stuff? There is, after all, life outside o...
Thu, Sep 24 2020, 3:14 PM
MBS Outperform; Bonds Stay Defiantly Sideways Overall
The stock market tried a few different moves on the bo...
Thu, Sep 24 2020, 11:54 AM
Once again new home sales exceeded expectations, this time by a lot. Sales of newly built homes rose 4.8 percent in August, to a seasonally adjusted a...
Thu, Sep 24 2020, 9:52 AM
It's no secret that the bond market has been sideways for a month and a half by even the strictest definitions, and broadly sideways since first settl...
Thu, Sep 24 2020, 9:13 AM
As the COVID-19 crisis dragged into its sixth month in August the total number of mortgage delinquencies continued to ebb, but the rate of decline app...
Thu, Sep 24 2020, 8:59 AM
I need to make a dart board for the wall behind me for Zoom calls that has “rates up” and “rates down” and “rates the same” on it. Until we see actual...
Wed, Sep 23 2020, 4:16 PM
Mortgage rates didn't do much today. The average lender was effectively unchanged from yesterday. The same could be said yesterday, and the day before...
Wed, Sep 23 2020, 4:05 PM
Stocks Try to Help, But Bonds Stay Relentlessly Flat
Econ data, Treasury auctions and Fed speakers all faile...
Wed, Sep 23 2020, 3:56 PM
Mark Calabria, Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is stepping up his agency's actions to spring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSE...
Wed, Sep 23 2020, 3:53 PM
Home prices rose another 1.0 percent in July, bringing the year-over-year gain to 6.5 percent according to the House Price Index (HPI) produced by the...
Wed, Sep 23 2020, 9:35 AM
Mortgage application activity rebounded last week from the previous week's Labor Day holiday lull. The Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA's) Market C...
Wed, Sep 23 2020, 9:25 AM
You know times are tough in the world of bond market analysis when I resort to using an uninspired bullet point list of events for a headline. The on...
Wed, Sep 23 2020, 8:54 AM
I know that plenty of folks at United Wholesale read this commentary, and the company is in the news about a merger that will take UWM public valuing ...
Tue, Sep 22 2020, 4:55 PM
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the two government sponsored agencies that guarantee timely payment of principal and interest to the investors who fron...
Tue, Sep 22 2020, 4:37 PM
Stocks vs Bonds; Bonds vs Supply
There's a fairly strong case to be made for stock market weakness helpin...
Tue, Sep 22 2020, 11:26 AM
Existing home sales continued on a roll for the third consecutive month, hitting the highest level in August since December 2006. The National Associa...
Tue, Sep 22 2020, 10:24 AM
There was another big surge in the amount of equity on the balance sheets of American homeowners in the second quarter of this year. CoreLogic reports...
Tue, Sep 22 2020, 10:04 AM
Remember simpler times when following interest rate movements meant waiting for economic data to come out and counting on logical, repeatable, predict...
Tue, Sep 22 2020, 9:11 AM
Today (Tuesday), while Washington DC “sucks the air out of the room,” welcome to the Autumn Solstice (Equinox) in the U.S., the day when the Sun appea...
Mon, Sep 21 2020, 3:35 PM
Stocks vs Bonds; Bonds vs Supply
There's a fairly strong case to be made for stock market weakness helpin...
Mon, Sep 21 2020, 11:31 AM
Fannie Mae has upgraded its forecast for the third quarter gross domestic product (GDP). It now expects growth at an annualized pace of 30.4 percent ,...
Mon, Sep 21 2020, 10:24 AM
If you watch the news long enough, you see all kinds of interesting things. Cracker Barrel is adding alcohol to its menu? Yup! And you must watch this...
Mon, Sep 21 2020, 10:06 AM
One of my favorite pastimes is debunking the notion that stock prices and bonds yields 'always' correlate. Years of indoctrination from the conventio...
Fri, Sep 18 2020, 5:38 PM
Mortgage rates are most influenced by the bond market and the bond market is most influenced by the Federal Reserve (aka "The Fed"). So when the Fed s...
Fri, Sep 18 2020, 5:30 PM
Range Trading Settling in For Long(er) Haul
With no significant bond market volatility in response to this w...
Fri, Sep 18 2020, 12:40 PM
One out of every 15 home sales in the second quarter of the year were defined as "flips" by ATTOM Data Solutions. A flip is any arms-length transactio...
Fri, Sep 18 2020, 12:37 PM
There was a fourth straight decline in the number of mortgage loans in forbearance during the week ended September 15. Black Knight says the total dro...
