Refi Help Coming? Is anyone listening to housing problems out there? Maybe: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said he expects a U.S. housing regulator in the coming weeks to detail mortgage refinance programs that could help the battered housing market. “My sense is, based on what I’ve seen…it’s going to be meaningful enough to make a [...]

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Treasury handed off their new White Paper on the future of home finance to Congress today. Worth reading for people who follow closely, but it’s a political document delivered to politicians, who now have some new surface level talking points about chopping down big government. As for market reality, the most important thing for winding [...]

Some confusion may end on Friday, when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner present Congress with three options for reducing the government’s role in home finance. Pundits suggest that the US will have an 8-10 year period to reduce Fannie & Freddie portfolios. Look for a reduction in the maximum loan amount to $625,500, a gradual increase [...]

Refis Are 81% Of Mortgage Apps This morning we learned, thanks to the MBA, what lock desks already knew: mortgage applications in the U.S. declined last week for a third consecutive time. The weekly index fell 1.4% to the lowest level in six weeks, with purchases down 3.3% and refinancing down .9% percent. (Refi’s are [...]

Rates dropped last Tuesday when S&P downgraded Greece and Portugal debt, which caused bond investors to reallocate to safer mortgage (and Treasury) bonds—when bond prices rise on buying, rates drop. This positive mortgage sentiment generally held throughout the week, and zero-point rates on loans up to $729k ended the week at record lows. GOOD JUMBO [...]

Today’s historic signing of health reform into law by President Obama has overshadowed something else that happened today: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner testified before the House Financial Services Committee about the future of housing finance, and the fate of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—the two government entities that guarantee $5t and 50% of our residential [...]

Despite volatility last week that caused rates to move up and down about .2%, we ended the week even. Business and consumer inflation reports both showed that inflation is under control. The Fed reiterated this after their FOMC meeting Tuesday, and left overnight bank-to-bank and Fed-to-bank rates at .25% and .75% respectively. Rates were especially [...]

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 [...]

The folks at Dictionary.com aren’t always topical on their word of the day choices, and I’m not even sure that’s their goal, but they certainly nailed it today with the word panjandrum. It means an important personage or pretentious official, and today was jam packed with panjandrums. In fact, I didn’t even get a chance [...]