August Starts Strong Thanks to Weaker Econ Data
August 1, 2022 During the Fed’s press conference last week, Powell reiterated what we thought we already knew about Fed policy and the bond market in general. Specifically, the next big-picture shift will be data dependent. In several ways, that narrative already began playing out in July. Now August is kicking things off in the […]
Rates Jump Up To Highest Levels in Nearly a Month
Last week’s mortgage rate momentum served to reverse 3 of the best consecutive weeks in nearly a year – themselves a reversal of the worst 4 months since the 1980s. Even after last week’s jump, rates remained safely below the long-term highs seen in early May. Now, after a new week began with another volatile […]
Have Rates Finally Turned a Corner?
Mortgage rates fell again yesterday, bringing them even deeper into their best levels in over a month, but caveats abound. First off. They’re still quite high in the bigger picture. Moreover, much of the recent drop was arguably made possible by an equally abrupt spike that began in the last week of April. In other words, […]
New Home Sales Plummet: Big Wake Up Call or a Logical Shift?
May 25, 2022 The housing market has been keeping its head down, keeping calm, and carrying on in the face of the biggest rate spike since the 1980s. The ability to ignore higher interest rates is nothing new for home sales. In fact, sometimes we see almost no reaction in sales numbers when rates rise. We […]
Highest Mortgage Rates Since 2009
Where do we even begin the conversation about mortgage rates on any given day in the spring of 2022? The news has frequently fallen into the category of “same thing, different day.” The “same thing” in today’s case is another jump up to long-term highs. Today’s dubious distinction is that we’d have to go back to 2009 before […]
Mortgage Rates Fall Moderately For 2nd Day in a Row
When it comes to financial markets and mortgage rates, things rarely happen in straight lines. Each time rates spiked to new multi-year highs in recent weeks, they’ve managed to find a day or two of reprieve. Yesterday was the second day of one such instance of reprieve. Examples of consecutive days of improvement are rare […]