Five Minute Maturity – 05/07/2021

Good morning! Collectively, MBS prepay speeds for the month of April dropped -21% vs. street expectations of -15%. In March of 2020, rates dropped significantly, prompting droves of borrowers to refinance their mortgages. As a result, prepay speeds shot up, making MBS...

Five Minute Maturity – 05/05/2021

Good morning and happy hump day. Today the MBA (Mortgage Banker’s Assn) is very active, with an early release of its weekly Mortgage Applications for the week ending April 30 and 1st quarter report on delinquencies and foreclosures. The 6:00 a.m. Mortgage Applications...

Five Minute Maturity – 05/03/2021

Good morning and happy Monday!  Auto sales are on the front burner today as we get Ward’s Total Vehicle Sales for April after the stock market closes.  The street is looking for a 150k (annualized) pullback from March’s HUGE jump to 17.75 million.  In...

Five Minute Maturity – 04/28/2021

Good morning and happy hump day! We’re still on the scheduled housing news train today, as we got Mortgage Applications for the week ending April 23. Last week’s +8.6% winner of a release is still echoing strongly around the water coolers of the U.S. business...

Five Minute Maturity – 04/21/2021

Good morning and happy hump day. We finally got some housing news this morning with the release of Mortgage Applications for the week ending April 16th. Coming off the previous weeks -3.7%, today’s number was a HUGE improvement at +8.6%! In a show of strength,...

Five Minute Maturity – 04/23/2021

Good morning and happy Friday! Existing home sales for the month of March came in lower than expected at -3.7% to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 6.01 million units. Given the current state of low inventory and high prices, many homeowners who would...

Five Minute Maturity – 04/26/2021

Good morning all and happy Monday. No scheduled mortgage news today, but still plenty of conversation about that New Home Sales number for March from Friday! The street was looking for a reversal from Feb’s horrible -18.2% to +14.2%. Instead, we got a rocket ride to...

Five Minute Maturity – 04/19/2021

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back for another week! We do not have any housing data today, but we do have an interesting story from across the pond. UK lenders are now writing home loans with 5% down payments. This government-backed plan makes...

Five Minute Maturity – 04/16/2021

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, and happy Friday! This morning, the U.S. Census Bureau released housing starts and building permits for the month of March. After rather dismal readings in February, the street was expecting a significant rebound. They ended up...

Five Minute Maturity – 04/14/2021

Good morning and happy hump day. We’re back to mortgage-related news today, with Mortgage Applications for the week ended April 9th released at 6:00 a.m. central time. We went into this release with more interest than normal because of the -5.1% reading for the prior...