Mortgage markets improved last week in low-volume trading. Between Monday to Thursday, Wall Street focused on the upcoming jobs reports and mortgage markets gained while traders jockeyed for position. Mortgage rates drifted lower through Thursday afternoon. But, then, after a better-than-expected Non-Farm...

Watch For Mortgage Rates To Rise Before April. CNBC Market Action: Breaking down the markets, with Ira Jersey, RBC Capital Markets and James Bianco, Bianco Research.

The market has twenty trading sessions before the cessation of the MBS purchase program.  Traders believe that mortgage rates should increase, most noticeably in the lower coupon, current production area. At this point, besides the Fed, traders are not seeing much buying outside of some hedge funds...

Conforming and FHA mortgage rates have improved over the last 10 days, but that could all change this Friday with the release of February’s Non-Farm Payrolls report. Non-Farm Payrolls is the official name of the government’s monthly jobs report and, given the fragile state of the U.S....

Mortgage markets improved last week as economic reports painted a less-than-stellar portrait of the U.S. economy and concerns of a looming monetary policy change eased. Mortgage pricing improved dramatically, despite a late-Friday retreat. Mortgage rates are now at their lowest levels since early-February. Last...

Sometimes, headlines for housing can be misleading and this week gave us a terrific example. On Wednesday, the Commerce Department released its Housing Starts data for January 2010. The data showed starts at a 6-month high. A “Housing Start” is a privately-owned home on which construction has ...

Foreclosures stories dominate the national housing news. It seems at least one foreclosure-related story makes its way to the front page or the nightly news every week. But for as much as the foreclosure filing statistics can be astounding — over 300,000 homes were served last month alone —...

They are going up!!! http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bernanke-exit-timing-to-depend-on-data-2010-02-10-120120 The Fed could increase the interest paid on excess bank reserves to sop up “extra” cash out there, which may have more of an impact than raising the overnight Fed Funds rate. Not...

The economy’s improving but lending standards are not. Nationally, banks are making mortgage approvals harder to come by. Underwriting guidelines are tightening. The data comes from the Federal Reserve’s quarterly survey to its member banks.  The Fed asks senior bank loan officers around...

Mortgage markets improved last week on domestic jobs data and international banking concerns. The news triggered buying in the bond market and, as a result, conventional, FHA and VA mortgage rates improved for the 4th consecutive week. Mortgage rates are now at a 6-week low but probably shouldn’t...