Mortgage News Daily

• A Bit of Meaningless Weakness. More Important Stuff On Deck December 4, 2023
  A Bit of Meaningless Weakness. More Important Stuff On Deck Bonds lost ground to start the new week, but not for any compelling reasons.  If we could even make a case for the weakness being caused by something, we'd be forced to rely on unsatisfying explanations like technical corrections or a leveling off of the […]
• Mortgage Rates Move Slightly Higher, But Still Effectively at 3-Month Lows December 4, 2023
  Apart from this past Friday, you'd have to go back to September 1st to see lower mortgage rates than today.  It probably makes the best sense to view last Friday as a slightly overdone rally as opposed to viewing today as some sort of ominous shift. More importantly, it probably doesn't matter which way it's […]
• Sellers Cash in on "Too Much of a Good Thing" December 4, 2023
  Bond rallies = lower rates.  We like bond rallies.  But when rates fall too quickly or consistently, it can be too much of a good thing.  That's a phenomenon we were already discussing in the first half of last week, but Friday's rally took it to the next level with 10yr yields moving below 4.20%.  […]
• TPO, Subservicing, Marketing, CRA Products; Training and Webinars; Podcast Interview with Dr. Elliot Eisenberg December 4, 2023
  “People would learn more from their mistakes if they weren’t so busy denying them.” Here’s a little trivia for the compliance folks in the coffee room: The CFPB handles 20,000 consumer complaints per week, and given that financing a home, and then servicing the loan, is the largest financial transaction most individuals go through, you […]
• Another Surprisingly Strong Day For Mortgage Rates December 1, 2023
  Just yesterday, we were nodding in agreement and acceptance of the fact that rates were better served by cooling off a bit (read: "rising") after improving at a pace that seemed too quick for the motivations earlier in the week.  In other words, it was a bit of a pickle to explain why Tuesday and […]
• Another Surprisingly Eager Bond Rally Suggests Caution and Opportunity December 1, 2023
  Another Surprisingly Eager Bond Rally Suggests Caution and Opportunity Two days ago, the focus of the analysis was on the potentially puzzling level of strength in the bond market (i.e. gains seemed a bit overdone relative to motivations). In fact, we welcomed yesterday's bump in yields as something that made more sense in the current […]
• No Whammies From ISM and Powell December 1, 2023
  With it being the first trading day of a new month and a Friday, it's hard to determine the extent to which traders planned to buy bonds today providing an absence of the proverbial whammies.  At the very least we can say not only were there no whammies in either of today's two key events, but […]
• Wholesale, TPO, Verification, Appraisal Products; What are Lenders Doing About Rising Credit Costs? December 1, 2023
  Yesterday, a clown held the door open for me. It was such a nice jester. On the flip side, it’s not nice being taken advantage of and lenders are feeling Thunderstruck about, as this Commentary has mentioned several times, credit costs being jacked (more below). On the inflation theme and a little more mainstream, for […]
• Mortgage Rate Winning Streak Finally Ends, But Just Barely November 30, 2023
  If you count the Friday after Thanksgiving as a business day, mortgage rates had fallen for 6 straight days as of yesterday afternoon.  Moreover, they'd reached the lowest levels in 3 months and had put an impressive amount of distance between themselves and the highs seen just over a month ago. Ironically, yesterday's analysis expressed […]
• Pending Sales Slide to 20-year Low November 30, 2023
  The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) said its Pending Home Sale Index (PHSI) established a record low in October. The Index, a forward-looking indicator of contracts signed to purchase single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums, and cooperative apartments, dropped 1.5 percent to 71.4 in October, the lowest number since the index was originated in 2001 . The […]