Most of the pool, 68.6%, is in the repayment phase, while 19.1% of the loans in the pool are in deferment.

Among the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas, 25 had annual price increases in July, while the others recorded price declines, Zillow found.

The tests modeled how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would fare after absorbing losses like a total $36.1 billion provision in credit losses in a severe downturn.

The Office of Management and Budget under President Donald Trump has not apportioned any discretionary awards to financial institutions in the fiscal year of 2025, according to new documents released by the agency.

The since-defunct lender, which was purchased by Newrez in 2021, agreed to pay a $1.8 million penalty and has refunded over $550,000 to borrowers.

Incidental Weakness or a New Trend?

The most interesting thing that happened in the bond market today involved trading levels breaking to just slightly worse levels than last week.  Looking back to the beginning of the month, this is starting to look like a trend toward progressively weaker levels. But is it? From a purely technical standpoint, that case could be made, but considering volume, the time of year, and the econ calendar, it’s just as easily chalked up to incidental movement in a narrow range.  In fact, all of August’s trading continues taking place well inside the range set by the post-jobs report rally.  

Econ Data / Events

Export prices mm (Jul)

0.1% vs 0.1% f’cast, prev 0.5%

Import prices mm (Jul)

0.4% vs 0.0% f’cast, prev -0.1%

NY Fed Manufacturing (Aug)

11.90 vs 0.0 f’cast, prev 5.50

Retail Sales (Jul)

0.5% vs 0.5% f’cast, prev 0.6%

Retail Sales (ex-autos) (Jul)

0.3% vs 0.3% f’cast, prev 0.8%

Retail Sales Control Group MoM (Jul)

0.5% vs 0.4% f’cast, prev 0.8%

Market Movement Recap

09:25 AM Moderately stronger overnight, but selling off since 8:20am CME open.  MBS unchanged and 10yr down less than half a bp at 4.313

10:57 AM Weakest levels.  MBS down an eighth and 10yr up 2bps at 4.337

02:57 PM Sideways just off weakest levels.  MBS down 3 ticks (.09) and 10yr up 2.2bps at 4.34

Mortgage rates are as high as they’ve been on almost any other day this month.  You’d have to go back to August 1st to see anything higher.  On the other hand, rates are still noticeably lower than almost any other day of the past 10 months.  It’s really only the past 2 weeks that have been any better and the gap between recent highs and lows is very small. In other words, rates have been holding a narrow range near 10 month lows in August.  There’s been a modicum of upward drift over the past few days, but no material developments.  This week will be fairly light in terms of sources of potential volatility. Once upon a time, the market may have worried about the impact from the Fed’s Jackson Hole Symposium. While Fed Chair Powell could say something that causes a reaction in rates at the end of the week, it wouldn’t be on the same scale as something like a surprising result in the jobs report or inflation data.

As I type this, I’m at the doctor’s office, and some guy a few seats over is booing all the names being called that aren’t his. Do you boo the products that you don’t have? Non-Agency lending, much of it in the form of non-QM loans, has been moving steadily higher at the expense of Freddie Mac’s and Fannie Mae’s market share. Are rates helping? I went back and looked at January 2 of this year. The 2-year Treasury was yielding 4.20 percent, and the 10-year was yielding 4.52, a difference of 32 basis points. Today we have them at 3.74 and 4.29, a difference of 55 basis points, so this difference, one measure of the steepness of the yield curve, has doubled. It is steeper. How’s your adjustable-rate product offering? ARMs now account for nearly 10 percent of applications, per the MBA. Our biz could certainly use a little boost: According to Curinos’ proprietary application index, refinances decreased 20 percent in July; the purchase index decreased 28 percent for July as a whole. July 2025 funded mortgage volume increased 2 percent YoY and decreased 2 percent MoM. (Curinos sources a statistically significant data set directly from lenders to produce these benchmark figures. We drill into this data further here.) (Today’s podcast can be found here and this week’s is sponsored by FirstClose. FirstClose provides fintech solutions to HELOC and mortgage lenders nationwide, increases profitability and reduces costs for mortgage lenders through systems and relationships that enable lenders to assist borrowers more effectively and ultimately shorten closing times. Hear an interview with NFTYDoor’s Mark Schacknies on the reshaping of mortgage lending: from lightning-fast HELOC approvals and real-time AI underwriting to a human-plus-tech model that prioritizes loan officers over direct-to-consumer disruption.)

Summertime trading conditions tend to amplify trading motivations that might otherwise get lost in the shuffle. This morning, it’s been the opening bells (8:20am CME and 9:30am NYSE) that have resulted in distinct phases of selling pressure.  That weakness offsets moderate overnight strength and bonds are now moving into weaker territory.  With NAHB builder confidence being the only offering on the econ calendar, there was never a chance that today’s movement would be determined by econ data.  

ICE Mortgage Technology originally planned to complete the Encompass SDK to API migration by Oct. 31; now users have an additional 14 months.