The line-up of economic data in the week ahead is one of the lightest of the year. Monday is essentially data-free. The following two days of the week are focused on housing with Existing Home Sales on Tuesday and New Home Sales on Wednesday. Those same two days also kick off the Treasury Note auctions for the week though Tuesday's 2yr Notes are generally not moving markets these days. Wednesday's 5yr auction has more potential to affect MBS, but the result would have to be a pretty big surprise in one direction or another. The data shifts away from housing on Thursday with Durable Goods and Weekly Jobless Claims, both moderately important data sets, though not 'high risk' events. Thursday also rounds out the Treasury auctions for the week with 7yr Notes at 1pm. While there is data on Friday...(read more)
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London plans to use a painfully "High-Pitched Sound Generator" to disperse large crowds at the Olympics. Observers note that it will be Cindy Lauper's first paying gig since '86. Speaking of high-pitched noises (and no, this is not a lead in to a Taylor Swift joke), the constructive clamoring about the CFPB's flat fee continues . "The CFPB for consumer finance, in my opinion, is the same thing as the CFTC for commodity trading overseeing Future Commission Merchants and the SEC for stock broker/dealers. Both the futures and stock brokerage industries have formed self-regulating entities. The National Futures Association for commodities and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) for stocks. The mortgage industry would be well served if the industry itself through the MBA or other...(read more)
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MBS Live : MBS Afternoon Market Summary 104-16 Turned out to be an important level for Fannie 3.5's today. There's more than the usual amount of content in the 'alerts and updates' section below if you're looking to get caught up on how it played out. Long story short, bond markets held up quite well on a Friday that mostly saw money flowing OUT of both sides of the market (i.e. equities and fixed-income both lower in price today). But even the late day volatility left the 104-16 technical level intact through 4pm. From now until MBS go out for the day, it's not out of the realm of possibility to see illiquidity take things a bit lower, but whether or not lenders react to that depends on the lender in question. If it were us, we'd call it a week. MBS Pricing Snapshot Pricing shown below is...(read more)
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Mortgage Rates improved marginally from yesterday's new all-time lows. Without any major scheduled events to digest, bond markets were left to their own devices and paid a decent amount of attention to a sell-off in stocks. When yields in the broader bond markets move lower, MBS (the "mortgage-backed securities" that most directly influence lenders' rates) tend to move lower in yield as well, allowing lenders to off lower costs, lower rates, or a combination of the two. With the recent move lower to a 3.75% Best-Execution level for 30yr Fixed Conventional loans, today's improvements were seen more in the form of decreased borrowing costs, or increased lender credit, as the case may be. If you're a first-time or even frequent reader looking for a bit more clarity on "best-execution," we just...(read more)
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The State Regulatory Registry, LLC (SRR) and the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System (NMLS) have issued an Annual Report for 2011. The report notes that 2011 was the first year that all state mortgage regulatory agencies utilized NMLS to manage mortgage loan originator (MLO) licenses on the system. In addition, in January the NMLS Federal Registry became fully operational. By the end of the year the Federal Registry contained active registrations for 11,081 institutions and 375,654 registered MLOs. According to the report, for the first time almost all of the nearly half-million individual mortgage loan originators (MLOs) along with their license or registration status and other information are now available to the general public on-line through NMLS Consumer Access. By the end of 2011 NMLS...(read more)
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MBS Live : MBS Morning Market Summary As the trading day progresses, things are shaping up to be increasingly uneventful even though MBS are down 6/32nds. Reason being: everything has been well contained, and what little weakness we've seen has occurred in a rather orderly fashion and without major volume spikes. Bond markets are staying reasonably connected to stocks, given the lack of market-moving data and European headlines. In short, today looks like the "wind down" that we thought yesterday might have been. We're not completely out of the woods as far as potential volatility is concerned. But as far as coasting into the weekend with minimal losses, it's "so far so good." MBS Pricing Snapshot Pricing shown below is delayed, please note the timestamp at the bottom. Real time pricing is...(read more)
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Realtors® massed on the Washington Mall on Thursday to show their strength in a year in which their trade organization, The National Association of Realtors (NAR) seems anxious on several levels. An estimated 15,000 Realtors gathered at the foot of the Washington Monument to, in the words of NAR President Moe Veissi "protect the American Dream of homeownership." According to a press release regarding the Rally to Protect the American Dream as the event was characterized, "Realtors® are working to ensure that people who want to own a home or invest in real estate and can responsibly afford to do so will continue to have the opportunity to do that." NAR is currently concerned about discussions to include a requirement for a 20 percent downpayment in the proposed definition of Qualified...(read more)
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Facebook...Facebook...Facebook...I guess the financial press is tired of discussing things like Europe's woes. ( Even today's closing paragraph at the bottom is about Facebook. ) Say what you want, but it is influencing real estate down in San Francisco . To help keep things in perspective, I received this note about small improvements in the price of real estate in various markets: "If I reduce your wages by $1,000 a month for 5 years but finally, in one month, give you a raise of 0.2% in February ... would you really consider that positive overall? It does not address the overreach of price declines that the banks fire sales have caused. That little problem will take decades to resolve at 0.2% a month increase." I agree, and good point. We'd all agree, however, that at least the .2% improvement...(read more)
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With so many unprecedented and hefty considerations, markets might enjoy today's complete absence of scheduled economic data as some sort of chance to seek its own equilibrium. That sentence was actually lifted from an article we wrote in July 2011 when European drama was first beginning to collide with impending Fed policy changes. The first four days of the week contained plenty of events informing both of those heavy hitters and markets attempted to reconcile those versus the decreasingly significant scheduled econ calendar. Back then, we thought that the data-less Friday looked like a decent opportunity for markets to "trade it out," but as it happened, things didn't move too much until two weeks later when 10yr yields dropped about 60bps in 5 days in the run up to NFP. Interestingly enough...(read more)
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MBS Live : MBS Afternoon Market Summary Two of our favorite made-up terms joined forces today to carry MBS to yet another all-time high and 10yr yields to the high 1.6's! The day looked as if it would be a deceleration in terms of volume and volatility this morning, but we turned out to be quite wrong about that, although rates moved in the right direction for MBS watchers. The culprits were overnight headlines in Europe that noted a similar "run on the bank" going on in Spain as the one just seen in Greece. Even if the news and events themselves weren't responsible for subsequent all-time lows in German Bund yields, they certainly reminded investors that there are bigger fish to fry regardless of how Greece plays out. Then there was the Philly Fed data, which in and of itself, isn't cause...(read more)
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Mortgage Rates hit new all-time lows today. In most cases, lenders' offerings are just slightly better across the board than they were in late January, the last time we officially noted "new all-time lows," though some lenders are not quite back to their previous best levels. A much weaker-than-expected reading on a widely followed report on business conditions in the mid-Atlantic region gave rates markets a bit of an early jolt lower. From there, an absence of additional data gave way to technical momentum, helping rates even lower. Markets are facing tremendous uncertainty over the eventual outcome of Greek elections in June as well as the fate of the Spanish banking sector. Today, Spain saw their own version of the "run on banks" that occurred in Greece yesterday, reminding traders that...(read more)
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For the second time in a week a national housing trade organization has shown that purchasing a home is now within the reach of a record number of Americans. On Tuesday the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) published its affordability index indicating the purchasing power of American households had broken through 200 on its index for the first time in its history. Today the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and Wells Fargo released their Housing Opportunity Index (HOI) which showed that 77.5 percent of all new and existing homes sold in the first quarter of 2012 were affordable to families earning the national median income. This is up from 75.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011. While NAR used a national median income of just under $61,000 the one used by the NAHB...(read more)
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MBS Live : MBS Morning Market Summary The main market-mover of the morning was the release of the Philadelphia Fed Survey, the chief component of which fell from 8.5 last month to -5.8 today. This happens occasionally with regional manufacturing reports and particularly, we're reminded of the August Philly Fed Index that fell to -22 from a +6.2 in July. Although that instance constituted a bigger discrepancy, today's is arguably as much of a surprise considering the recent relative stability of the data (or even "uptrend" with the exception of last month's minor pull-back). Amazingly, it kicked off the biggest hour of volume of the week by a small margin over y'day's hour following the Greece/ECB news. MBS hit another all time high albeit by a small margin and 10yr yields now trade under 1...(read more)
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Accenture Credit Services announced that, "Low interest rates, less competition, more regulation and tighter credit standards have pushed the time it takes the biggest mortgage lenders to refinance a mortgage loan from 45 days a year ago to more than 70 days now." Underwriters, who in the past could underwrite 6-8 files a day, now do 2-3 - and they've turned into auditors instead of underwriters . And the borrower, of course, is the one who pays the cost of the longer time frames and the higher overhead. But refinancing cures all evils, right? Wrong: "The number of FHA-insured home loans entering foreclosure jumped in March after half the mortgages it modified to ease repayment terms were in default again a year or more later." More on that HERE . Speaking of loans heading south, to complicate...(read more)
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If the calendar of upcoming events and y'day's volume are any indication, it's possible that Wednesday was the climactic final scene before the intermission. Volume ramped up steadily on the first three days of the week, hitting it's best levels since mid-March. 10yr Treasuries hit their best levels since October, stocks their lowest since January, and MBS hit all-time highs yet again (and took down a big chunk of originator production in the process). All "that" seemed to come to a head with today's FOMC minutes and obligatory Greek headline(s). On the surface, tomorrow looks much calmer by comparison. Apart from the standard weekly Jobless Claims, forecast at 365k vs last week's 367k (not really on our radar as a big market mover at the moment), there's really only the Philly Fed index at...(read more)
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