Things are looking up for the housing market at the start of the new year.  Granted, some of the following data pertains to the last few months of 2019, but it nonetheless speaks to a friendly shift that is arguably already well underway. 

Fannie Mae’s Home Purchase Sentiment Index offers a broad measure of housing market […]

Everything’s relative when it comes to mortgage rates. For every homeowner that’s been concerned about a short-term increase in rates, there’s another who’s glad to remind them how high rates used to be.

At the moment, with top tier 30yr fixed offerings hanging out under 4%, it’s hard to be too concerned about where we are today.  But fretting over […]

Last week, we talked about the many reasons that the importance of the US/China trade relationship could not be overstated. This week’s market movement showed why. 

With new tariffs set to take effect on Sunday, Dec 15th, we knew big news became more and more likely as the week progressed.  It arrived unequivocally on Thursday and remained front and […]

Certain years gain notoriety in financial markets for various reasons. Sometimes these are massive, individual reasons like 2013, the year of the taper tantrum. Sometimes there are separate themes that pull the market in opposite directions like 2016’s Brexit /Trump election combo that pushed rates massively lower and then massively higher.

2019 has easily joined the ranks of those […]

Financial markets remain transfixed by seemingly insignificant updates relating to US/China trade negotiations. For those who follow markets closely, this can be exasperating at times, but it’s happening for a good reason.

If we only look at shorter-term market movements (like the chart below with this week’s stock prices and bond yields), we might conclude that […]

Last week, we discussed a fairly quick move toward LOWER rates. One short week later and we’re forced to discuss an even more abrupt move back toward HIGHER rates. By Friday, the average mortgage lender was quoting the highest rates in more than 3 months, and things could get worse before they get better.

In both cases, breaking […]

I’ve gone out of my way on several occasions to explain why mortgage rates are not directly affected by Fed rate cuts. Now this week, the Fed cut its rate and mortgage rates dropped abruptly the very next day. Is it time to revisit this logic?

Not even a little bit.  It is true that the Fed […]

In about 2 weeks, the big bond rally of 2019 (i.e. the big drop in rates!) will officially be 1 year old (because it actually began in the 2nd week of November).  This has been a uniquely interesting year for rates.  Granted, there are plenty of other years with the same sort of big overall […]

The UK’s attempt to exit the EU (aka “Brexit”) is back in the news.  UK voters decided to part ways with the EU in 2016, but it’s taken this long to hammer out the details.  After an extension of the original deadline earlier this year, the new deadline of October 31, 2019 is approaching quickly.

That’s […]

It would have been hard to make it through this week without hearing about Friday’s trade deal progress, but how does it affect you?  At face value, a healthy trade partnership is good for the global economy, but if you need a mortgage any time soon,  the trade deal just pushed your rate higher.  

Rates actually began […]