Jumpy Rate Market Response To GDP & Home Sales Reports Rates dropped 0.2% early last week then rose Friday to end the week even. The $109b in Treasury auctions throughout last week caused mortgage bonds to sell off slightly, and July’s record low New Home Sales (down 32.4% year-over-year) and Existing Home Sales (down 25.5% [...]

Here’s an NYT op-ed with some useful history of the 30yr mortgage. It also discusses some ideas about flexible mortgages, where for example, a borrower can have a 30yr fixed that could have interim periods of interest-only when a borrower needs it. These ideas are not new. Robert Shiller, of Case Shiller home price index [...]

In June 2009, publicly available housing derivatives were launched by Robert Shiller and Karl Case, the economists who run the most widely followed U.S. home price indicator: the S&P Case Shiller Index. The products are called MacroShares, and are essentially options any investor can use to make bets about whether home prices will rise or [...]

Home price expert Robert Shiller, co-founder of the S&P Case Shiller home price index and author of The Subprime Solution and Irrational Exuberance, has a famous anecdote about when it’s time to get out of a market. It was when he was in a cab and the cab driver was telling him all about how [...]