Don’t stress out. If we ignore the past 5 days, today’s mortgage rates are still the lowest since early 2023. That said, they’re up a bit from last week and they moved moderately higher day-over-day. Last week’s news regarding Fannie and Freddie’s plans to buy $200 bln of MBS (the mortgage-backed securities that directly dictate […]
Mortgage Rates End Week at Highs Read More »
Mortgage rates moved modestly lower for the average lender today, but higher for others. The distinction is whether the lender in question made a late-day adjustment yesterday afternoon. At the time, the underlying market for mortgage bonds was improving somewhat sharply. This prompted several lenders to drop rates before the end of business. Those lenders
Mortgage Rates Higher For Some Lenders and Lower For Others Read More »
Trading levels in the bond market directly impact the rates that mortgage lenders can offer. This is why rates moved so much lower after last week’s news regarding planned purchases of $200bln in mortgage backed bonds. But bonds aren’t the only input for rates, and those other inputs can make for days like today where
Mortgage Rates Unchanged Despite Bond Market Improvement Read More »
According to our chart of MND’s mortgage rate index, 30yr fixed rates bottomed at 6.01% yesterday, but that’s because the chart logs the day’s latest entry. On Friday, until late in the day, the chart showed a rate of 5.99%. It was only after several lenders raised rates in the afternoon that the index moved
Mortgage Rates Now Solidly Back Above 6% Read More »
Mortgage rates are either higher or lower today, depending on the lender in question. Some lenders raised rates on Friday afternoon in response to weakness in the bond market (lenders set rates based on the trading levels of MBS, the bonds that underlie the mortgage market). Those lenders are actually slightly lower today. Lenders who
Mortgage Rates Inch Higher From 3 Year Lows Read More »
On a week where the mortgage market was most likely to experience volatility due to Friday’s jobs report, Thursday afternoon’s surprise announcement of $200bln in GSE MBS (mortgage-backed securities) buying stole the show. This was already juicing the underlying MBS market yesterday afternoon, but traders took the surge to the next level this morning. This
Rates Plummet to 3 Year Lows, But There Are Caveats Read More »
Mortgage Rates Modestly Higher on Thursday. Friday’s Risks Are Bigger Mortgage rates were just a hair higher for the average lender on Thursday. The underlying bond market lost some ground following a stronger weekly Jobless Claims report and in sympathy with global bond market weakness overnight. Because rates are based on bonds, when bonds are
Mortgage Rates Modestly Higher on Thursday. Friday’s Risks Are Bigger Read More »
Wednesday had the potential to cause bigger volatility for rates due to the confluence of several important economic reports. If that data had been lopsided in one direction or the other, rates likely would have moved more. As it happened, the data was mixed. The net effect was an exceedingly modest drop in the average
Another 2-Month Low For Mortgage Rates After Modest Drop Read More »
Mortgage rates have been effectively unchanged for 5 straight days now. During that time, the MND 30yr fixed rate index hasn’t moved by more than 0.01%. The average borrower would see almost exactly the same terms on any of these days. The absence of volatility isn’t much of a surprise given the time of year
Mortgage Rates Barely Budge, But Volatility Risk is Increasing Read More »
The two days of 2025 with the lowest rates were September 16th and October 28th. Both days happened to be the Tuesdays that preceded Fed rate cuts. On both occasions, those rate cuts were delivered with other comments from the Fed that the bond market didn’t like. The net effect is/was two very obvious dips
Mortgage Rates Holding at 2-Month Lows Read More »