According to Curinos’ proprietary application index, March 2026 funded mortgage volume increased 35 percent y-o-y and increased 30 percent m-o-m. How did your company stack up? Curinos calculates that refinance and purchase rates were 5-6 basis points lower m-o-m and about 73 basis points y-o-y. (Curinos sources a statistically significant data set directly from lenders to produce these benchmark figures and drills into this data further here.) (Today’s podcast can be found here and this week’s ‘casts are Sponsored by Truework. Replace costly, error-prone verification waterfalls with a single, fully automated VOIE solution that delivers faster, more accurate, GSE-ready reports. So, your team can close more loans with less effort and lower cost. Today’s has an interview with Evergreen Home Loans’ Tamra Rieger on leadership, building teams, and winning business in the current rate environment.) Products, Services, and Software for Brokers and Lenders Missed milestones. Late valuations. Files are stuck between teams and third-party providers. Sound familiar? Default servicing depends on a network of third parties, but most organizations still rely on emails, status calls, and manually accessing provider systems for data entry and status updates to keep things moving. The result: delays, rework, and growing operational risk. In our latest blog, “Stop Managing Service Providers. Start Orchestrating Outcomes,” Clarifire challenges conventional wisdom, arguing the issue isn’t provider performance, but what happens when workflow breaks at the boundary between your team and your outside partners. The blog outlines how a workflow orchestration approach brings structure, visibility, and control across the entire default lifecycle, not just the parts your internal team touches. If you’re feeling the strain of manual efforts and managing service providers to keep timelines intact, this blog is worth reading.

Markets have plenty of war-related headlines to digest at any given moment these days. And while some of those headlines have been the biggest market movers of the month, traders are increasingly focusing on the examples that speak to the biggest-picture changes. Specifically, markets aren’t as interested in Wayne and Garth saying “game on” and “game off,” but rather, the actual moment that they pack up their sticks and nets and stop playing street hockey for the day (i.e. an announcement that the war is fully over and Hormuz is fully re-opened). In the meantime, the lesser headlines may add some slight 2-way volatility, but there are no obvious examples of that so far today (despite hundreds of potential opportunities). Bonds are taking the morning to consolidate the past 2 days of gains with a modest pull-back against a backdrop void of high consequence econ data. 

Large loan balances are increasingly common in non-QM and HELOC securitizations, bringing faster prepayments and higher delinquency risks, Bank of America Securities research shows.

Half of Gen Z homeowners and 44% of millennial homeowners were at risk of missing at least one mortgage payment over the last two years, ServiceLink found.

A federal judge refused to sign a settlement agreement between the Department of Justice and Houston developer Colony Ridge because it failed to provide any consumer relief. DOJ agreed to an out-of-court settlement instead.

Federal Reserve Gov. Michael Barr said in a speech Tuesday that rapidly changing trade policies and conflict in the Middle East are straining rural communities by raising business operating costs.

Both Chase and Wells Fargo had a 15% reduction quarter-to-quarter in mortgage originations, more than the industry forecast for a 6% drop-off, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods noted.

Bonds Ultimately Follow Oil’s Lead, Heading Lower War-Related Optimism

While there were no incredibly memorable sound bytes on the Iran war today, there were a few headlines that proved to be actionable for financial markets. The most actionable (by a wide margin) was a report on Fox News around 10am quoting a senior admin official as saying “a lot is happening today and tomorrow. We have all the ingredients of a deal, but it’s not all there yet.” This was paraphrased by Fox as “Senior Trump Admin. Official: Strong Indicators Toward Reaching Agreement With Iran.” Oil and bond yields dropped on the news and both moves continued into the afternoon. Stocks rallied and have now essentially fully recovered the war-related losses.

Econ Data / Events

Core PPI m/m (Mar)

0.1% vs 0.5% f’cast, 0.5% prev

Core PPI y/y (Mar)

3.8% vs 4.1% f’cast, 3.9% prev

PPI m/m (Mar)

0.5% vs 1.1% f’cast, 0.7% prev

PPI y/y (Mar)

4.0% vs 4.6% f’cast, 3.4% prev

Market Movement Recap

08:32 AM No real reaction to PPI data despite being much lower than expected.  MBS unchanged on the day and 10yr up less than half a bp at 4.293

10:39 AM Best levels of the day with MBS up an eighth and 10yr down 1.2bps at 4.277

02:08 PM Best levels. MBS up nearly a quarter point and 10yr down 3.4bps at 4.255

Mortgage rates had their best day of the month so far with the top tier 30yr fixed rate falling 0.08% for the average lender to the lowest levels in exactly 4 weeks. Today’s improvement is a bit bigger than today’s bond market movement would suggest. The discrepancy is due to timing. Bonds were improving fairly steadily since yesterday morning and the average lender didn’t adjust yesterday’s rates in response to the bond market improvement in the last few hours of the day. As such, that improvement was tacked on to today’s. As for the drivers of the market movement, it’s the same old story since the beginning of March. The Iran war is the primary source of motivation and oil prices are frequently the best correlated indicator for bond yields and interest rates. Around 10am this morning, oil dropped and bonds improved after a senior administration official said “a lot is happening today and tomorrow. We have all the ingredients of a deal, but it’s not all there yet.”

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