Mortgage Resources

The 70's and 80's brought unforgettable economic lessons about inflation. Since then, certain market participants have been watching inflation like hawks, even when they didn't need to. After the start of the pandemic, the massive amount of fiscal stimulus (covid...

Once a month, the government releases the Employment Situation, also known as "the jobs report."  No other piece of economic data is as consistently relevant for the bond market and, thus, interest rates.  For most of the past year, the normal correlation between jobs...

This week's 6.4% reading on Q1 GDP reinforced the notion of a strong economic recovery. In turn, the recovery helps to justify the sharp move higher in rates seen during the same 3 months. Rates managed to recover quite a bit in April, but ended up rising...

This week's New Home Sales report (for the month of March) stole the show, coming in over 1 million for the first time since 2006. But although sales are up 66% year-over-year, prices have fallen in recent months and are now basically unchanged from last year. What's...

The bond market has been pointing toward higher rates since last August.  Mortgage rates were able to defy that trend at first, but finally began spiking in the new year.  February and March were two of the worst back-to-back months in years. The higher rates went,...

2021 hasn't been a great year for mortgage rates--at least not as far as their trajectory is concerned. But that could be changing.  Even if things don't get any better from here, the past 3 weeks are collectively the best we've seen since January. Mortgage rates are...

The housing market is heating and cooling at the same time, depending on the data in question. Who's telling the truth?  Actually, maybe everyone... According to home price appreciation, the market is on fire.  FHFA and Case Shiller (2 of the main home price reports...

The biggest story for the mortgage and housing market so far in 2021 has been the big spike in mortgage rates.  It has been more abrupt and covered more ground than all but the worst historical examples.  That said, it was always going to happen when the covid outlook...

Most of this week's mortgage rate coverage focused on a fairly gentle increase of 3.05 to 3.09 for the average 30yr fixed.  That number comes from Freddie Mac's weekly rate survey, which is one of the only games in town when it comes to capturing a broad, best case...