evan@evanhitch.com

Mortgage rates are based on movement in the bond market and although bonds experienced some volatility in response to Iran war news over the weekend, they ended up in similar territory to Friday morning. As such, it’s no surprise to see mortgage rates in similar territory as well.  The average lender began the day 0.02% […]

Weekend Selling Reverses After Another Round of De-Escalation Headlines Another day, another chance to sort through a barrage of war-related headlines to see which ones mattered to the bond market. In today’s case, there were two distinct contenders. The first was apparently bogus. It referred to Iran considering abandoning its enrichment program and it actually

Heading into the weekend, the big news was that the U.S. and Iran would meet in Pakistan to negotiate a peace deal. But by Sunday morning, the talks had failed over an impasse on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. The market-mover, however, was the U.S. response: a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. This sent oil

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Bonds Drift Weaker Despite Lower Oil Prices Although they still technically made positive progress versus the end of last week, bonds ended the day moderately weaker. Lower oil prices offered no support, but that’s a tricky correlation these days. Longer-term oil contracts continue lining up with bond yield movement more reliably. To be sure, we

Mortgage applications dipped again last week, though the pace of decline slowed considerably. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported a 0.8% decrease on a seasonally adjusted basis for the week ending April 3. Refinance activity continued to weaken, with the Refinance Index falling 3% from the previous week and now sitting 4% below year-ago levels.

If we’re splitting hairs, today’s average mortgage rates are technically higher than yesterday’s, but the change is so small that it’s just as fair to say that rates are flat. This closes out a week with surprisingly low volatility compared to that seen in March. In part, this can be attributed to longer-term oil prices

The median forecast for monthly core CPI was 0.28% (0.3 after rounding up for most econ calendars). Today’s actual number was 0.196–obviously quite a bit lower than forecasts. In addition, supercore fell to .179 from .349. Despite those victories, forecasts correctly predicted a sharp rise in headline inflation which moved up from 2.4% to 3.3%

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Many borrowers will see no difference between yesterday and today’s mortgage rate quotes. The average lender moved just a hair lower. Once again, the rate market is responding to war-related headlines and their impact on oil prices. Rates don’t always care what oil prices are doing, but at present, there’s more correlation than normal due