NAR’s Proposal for Fannie/Freddie My daughter and I went through the McDonald’s take-out window and I gave the clerk a $5 bill. Our total was $4.25, so I also handed her a quarter. She said, “You gave me too much money.” I said, “Yes I know, but this way you can just give me a [...]

State of Mortgage Industry Let’s start off with two basic premises. First, there has always been a range of borrowers (credit & risk-wise) that need home loans at rates that match the risk. Second, there have always been investors out there with varying degrees of appetite for risk, and demand more return for higher risk. [...]

Extreme rate volatility discussed in this WeeklyBasis report two weeks ago still holds. Rates traded up and down about .375% this week on fears about business inflation and Fed rate hikes. Today’s tame consumer inflation contributed to rates dropping again, and rates end the week roughly .25% above all time record lows. But this record [...]

This report covers weeks 57-59 of a mortgage bond purchase program by the Federal Reserve—here’s week 56. In the last three weeks, the Fed bought $34b net of mortgage bonds as follows: $12b Jan 28-Feb 3, $11b Feb 4-10, $11b Feb 12-17. For the past 5 months, the Fed has focused weekly buying on 4.5% [...]

Loan Agents Comment on New Good Faith Estimate I didn’t plan on yesterday’s Real Words From a Real Agent to incite such a firestorm of e-mails. But first, some “Good Faith Estimate chatter.” The grace period of the new GFE is set forth pretty clearly. But lenders are finding out that what HUD allows and [...]

The Fed held the overnight bank-to-bank Fed Funds Rate at a range of 0-0.25% and more definitively announced that they expect to wind down their mortgage bond purchases by March 31. They still said they will make a final decision on MBS buys according to market conditions, but they did say they’d wind down purchases [...]

The Fed kept the overnight bank-to-bank Fed Funds Rate target at 0-.25% and Fed-to-bank Discount Rate at .5%. They changed their language ever so slightly about the economy from “likely to remain weak for some time” to “likely to remain weak for a time” and following that by saying they expect fiscal and monetary stimulus [...]

Today is the 30th anniversary of the Fed rate system as we know it. After their October 6, 1979 FOMC meeting, the Fed announced a drastic change to monetary policy. Up until that time the money supply fluctuated with business cycles and rates were relatively fixed—the Fed Funds Rate was only allowed to float about [...]

This is a telling graphic from Bloomberg today. The government (via the Fed) is buying 28% of all mortgage bonds, as which we discuss often on this site, is the reason mortgage rates are so low in 2009. The Fed is also buying 10% of all Treasuries which helps keeps the broader rate complex (beyond [...]

Rates on conforming loans up to $417k and super-conforming loans up to $729k continue to trade up and down as much as .5% per week but as of today we’re net even on lows we touched 10 days ago. Rates on Jumbos from $729k to $3.5m are competitive for borrowers with strong down payments, income [...]