Interest Rates

Mortgage rates ended the previous week roughly in line with the best levels since May 1st.  Today’s modest improvement made it official.  Mortgage rates are primarily a function of trading levels in the bond market and bonds have had a few reasons to move at the start of the new week. There’s a small case […]

With Thursday being a federal holiday, banks (and more importantly, the underlying market for mortgage related bonds) were closed.  This means that lenders were not able to update mortgage rates.  It turns out that it wouldn’t have mattered either way as the average lender has barely budged from Wednesday’s levels.  But let’s not miss an

It happens, but it’s rare. A Fed “dot plot” day has come and gone with mortgage rates almost perfectly unchanged from the previous day. This speaks to the level of indecision not only in the market, but also among Fed members. First off, what’s a “dot plot day?”  The dot plot (or simply, “the dots”)

Mortgage rates continue operating in a narrow range with almost every day of the past two months falling between 6.8 and 7.0% for a top tier 30yr fixed scenario. Today’s average rate fell 0.03 after moving up 0.06 since June 12th. This morning’s most relevant potential influence–the Retail Sales report–turned out to have a limited

While there’s been no shortage of political and geopolitical headlines over the past 2 business days, there hasn’t been much by way of inspiration for the bond market. Bonds (and, thus, rates) have moved nonetheless.   Perhaps it was the lower rates achieved last Thursday that prompted a pullback, or perhaps traders are pricing in some

The top tier 30yr fixed mortgage rate index rose 0.04% on Friday, which would be a medium-sized defeat in and of itself. In the broader context, however, it was an acceptable adjustment on what has otherwise been a solid week.  Specifically, today’s rates are still 0.08% lower than last Friday’s. There were no standout individual

Mortgage rates being offered today are only a hair lower for the average lender than they were on June 4th, but June 4th was the best day since early May.  In other words, today’s average rate is the lowest in just over a month. This didn’t happen by chance. The underlying bond market has been

After a calm start to the week on Monday and Tuesday, we were likely to see a bit more volatility on Wednesday due to important events on the calendar. The first was the morning’s release of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), a key inflation report. Inflation is one of the most basic inputs for the

It was a fairly boring day on what has turned out to be a fairly boring week so far for mortgage rates.  After Friday’s larger spike, we’ve seen a microscopic recovery on each of the past 2 days. In terms of specific index levels, this equates to a 0.04% drop in the top tier 30yr

As hoped, Friday’s big rate spike did not carry additional momentum into the new week.  This is occasionally a risk when rates are responding to big surprise in the jobs report, but slightly less of a risk when the other economic data had been weaker.  All that having been said, it’s not as if we’re