REALTOR® Serving the San Francisco Bay Area Communities
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MBS RECAP: Slightly Bumpy Ride Late, But Important Level Holds
- Posted To: MBS CommentaryMBS Live : MBS Afternoon Market Summary 104-16 Turned out to be an important level for Fannie 3.5's today. There's more than the usual amount of content in the 'alerts and updates' section below if you're looking to get caught up on how it played out. Long story short, bond markets held up quite well on a Friday that mostly saw money flowing OUT of both sides of the market (i.e. equities and fixed-income both lower in price today). But even the late day volatility left the 104-16 technical level intact through 4pm. From now until MBS go out for the day, it's not out of the realm of possibility to see illiquidity take things a bit lower, but whether or not lenders react to that depends on the lender in question. If it were us, we'd call it a week. MBS Pricing Snapshot Pricing shown below is...(read more)Forward this article via email: Send a copy of this story to someone you know that may want to read it.
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Mortgage Rates Lower Still, But Progress Is Slow
- Posted To: Mortgage Rate WatchMortgage Rates improved marginally from yesterday's new all-time lows. Without any major scheduled events to digest, bond markets were left to their own devices and paid a decent amount of attention to a sell-off in stocks. When yields in the broader bond markets move lower, MBS (the "mortgage-backed securities" that most directly influence lenders' rates) tend to move lower in yield as well, allowing lenders to off lower costs, lower rates, or a combination of the two. With the recent move lower to a 3.75% Best-Execution level for 30yr Fixed Conventional loans, today's improvements were seen more in the form of decreased borrowing costs, or increased lender credit, as the case may be. If you're a first-time or even frequent reader looking for a bit more clarity on "best-execution," we just...(read more)Forward this article via email: Send a copy of this story to someone you know that may want to read it.
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Mortgage Registry Now Includes all States, Federal Lenders
- Posted To: MND NewsWireThe State Regulatory Registry, LLC (SRR) and the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System (NMLS) have issued an Annual Report for 2011. The report notes that 2011 was the first year that all state mortgage regulatory agencies utilized NMLS to manage mortgage loan originator (MLO) licenses on the system. In addition, in January the NMLS Federal Registry became fully operational. By the end of the year the Federal Registry contained active registrations for 11,081 institutions and 375,654 registered MLOs. According to the report, for the first time almost all of the nearly half-million individual mortgage loan originators (MLOs) along with their license or registration status and other information are now available to the general public on-line through NMLS Consumer Access. By the end of 2011 NMLS...(read more)Forward this article via email: Send a copy of this story to someone you know that may want to read it.
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MBS MID-DAY: Relatively Uneventful Despite Slight Weakness
- Posted To: MBS CommentaryMBS Live : MBS Morning Market Summary As the trading day progresses, things are shaping up to be increasingly uneventful even though MBS are down 6/32nds. Reason being: everything has been well contained, and what little weakness we've seen has occurred in a rather orderly fashion and without major volume spikes. Bond markets are staying reasonably connected to stocks, given the lack of market-moving data and European headlines. In short, today looks like the "wind down" that we thought yesterday might have been. We're not completely out of the woods as far as potential volatility is concerned. But as far as coasting into the weekend with minimal losses, it's "so far so good." MBS Pricing Snapshot Pricing shown below is delayed, please note the timestamp at the bottom. Real time pricing is...(read more)Forward this article via email: Send a copy of this story to someone you know that may want to read it.
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Realtors Show Clout, 'Protecting The American Dream' in DC Rally
- Posted To: MND NewsWireRealtors® massed on the Washington Mall on Thursday to show their strength in a year in which their trade organization, The National Association of Realtors (NAR) seems anxious on several levels. An estimated 15,000 Realtors gathered at the foot of the Washington Monument to, in the words of NAR President Moe Veissi "protect the American Dream of homeownership." According to a press release regarding the Rally to Protect the American Dream as the event was characterized, "Realtors® are working to ensure that people who want to own a home or invest in real estate and can responsibly afford to do so will continue to have the opportunity to do that." NAR is currently concerned about discussions to include a requirement for a 20 percent downpayment in the proposed definition of Qualified...(read more)Forward this article via email: Send a copy of this story to someone you know that may want to read it.
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A Note on The Implications Of Flat Fee Pricing; Lender Updates Continue; Ready For Another Refi Wave?
- Posted To: Pipeline PressFacebook...Facebook...Facebook...I guess the financial press is tired of discussing things like Europe's woes. ( Even today's closing paragraph at the bottom is about Facebook. ) Say what you want, but it is influencing real estate down in San Francisco . To help keep things in perspective, I received this note about small improvements in the price of real estate in various markets: "If I reduce your wages by $1,000 a month for 5 years but finally, in one month, give you a raise of 0.2% in February ... would you really consider that positive overall? It does not address the overreach of price declines that the banks fire sales have caused. That little problem will take decades to resolve at 0.2% a month increase." I agree, and good point. We'd all agree, however, that at least the .2% improvement...(read more)Forward this article via email: Send a copy of this story to someone you know that may want to read it.
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The Day Ahead: Markets Free To "Trade It Out" Amid Data-Free Session
- Posted To: MBS CommentaryWith so many unprecedented and hefty considerations, markets might enjoy today's complete absence of scheduled economic data as some sort of chance to seek its own equilibrium. That sentence was actually lifted from an article we wrote in July 2011 when European drama was first beginning to collide with impending Fed policy changes. The first four days of the week contained plenty of events informing both of those heavy hitters and markets attempted to reconcile those versus the decreasingly significant scheduled econ calendar. Back then, we thought that the data-less Friday looked like a decent opportunity for markets to "trade it out," but as it happened, things didn't move too much until two weeks later when 10yr yields dropped about 60bps in 5 days in the run up to NFP. Interestingly enough...(read more)Forward this article via email: Send a copy of this story to someone you know that may want to read it.
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MBS RECAP: Snowball Buying As Fedspectations Team Up With Euro-Drama
- Posted To: MBS CommentaryMBS Live : MBS Afternoon Market Summary Two of our favorite made-up terms joined forces today to carry MBS to yet another all-time high and 10yr yields to the high 1.6's! The day looked as if it would be a deceleration in terms of volume and volatility this morning, but we turned out to be quite wrong about that, although rates moved in the right direction for MBS watchers. The culprits were overnight headlines in Europe that noted a similar "run on the bank" going on in Spain as the one just seen in Greece. Even if the news and events themselves weren't responsible for subsequent all-time lows in German Bund yields, they certainly reminded investors that there are bigger fish to fry regardless of how Greece plays out. Then there was the Philly Fed data, which in and of itself, isn't cause...(read more)Forward this article via email: Send a copy of this story to someone you know that may want to read it.
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Mortgage Rates Officially Hit New All-Time Lows!
- Posted To: Mortgage Rate WatchMortgage Rates hit new all-time lows today. In most cases, lenders' offerings are just slightly better across the board than they were in late January, the last time we officially noted "new all-time lows," though some lenders are not quite back to their previous best levels. A much weaker-than-expected reading on a widely followed report on business conditions in the mid-Atlantic region gave rates markets a bit of an early jolt lower. From there, an absence of additional data gave way to technical momentum, helping rates even lower. Markets are facing tremendous uncertainty over the eventual outcome of Greek elections in June as well as the fate of the Spanish banking sector. Today, Spain saw their own version of the "run on banks" that occurred in Greece yesterday, reminding traders that...(read more)Forward this article via email: Send a copy of this story to someone you know that may want to read it.
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NAHB, NAR Agree, Homes Never More Affordable
- Posted To: MND NewsWireFor the second time in a week a national housing trade organization has shown that purchasing a home is now within the reach of a record number of Americans. On Tuesday the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) published its affordability index indicating the purchasing power of American households had broken through 200 on its index for the first time in its history. Today the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and Wells Fargo released their Housing Opportunity Index (HOI) which showed that 77.5 percent of all new and existing homes sold in the first quarter of 2012 were affordable to families earning the national median income. This is up from 75.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011. While NAR used a national median income of just under $61,000 the one used by the NAHB...(read more)Forward this article via email: Send a copy of this story to someone you know that may want to read it.
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