In the highest-priced housing markets, some buyers see adjustable-rate mortgages as the only loan they may initially qualify for, Cotality found.

TransUnion cuts VantageScore 4.0 to $0.99, aiming to boost lender choice and affordability as FHFA pushes mortgage score modernization and competition.

The company dropped the broker channel just months after Frank Martell became CEO; now that Anthony Hsieh is running things again, LoanDepot brought it back.

San Francisco-based Anthropic is challenging a decision by the department and other federal agencies like the Federal Housing Finance Agency to shift their AI work to other providers.

An estimated 565,000 first-lien refinances closed in the fourth quarter, up 50% from a year prior and the most since the second quarter of 2022, ICE found.

One of the conversation topics late last week in Deer Valley is the weather and climate, and more specifically that Salt Lake City had received virtually no snow this winter, which means that places like Atlanta and Charlotte have received more snow than a city at 4,300 feet elevation. Syracuse, New York has received nearly 5 feet of snow so far this year. Ever heard of Commonspace in Syracuse? As another affordable alternative, it’s a “cohousing” community in a restored 19th century office building made up of 25 mini apartments help affordability and that remind me a lot of my college dorm life, which was pretty cool and fun. The “Bull Moose Project” launched a new housing affordability hub examining why homeownership is increasingly out of reach for working families, and, per the site, outlining specific policy levers the Trump administration could use to restore competition and affordability in the housing market. (Today’s podcast can be found here and this week’s ‘casts are sponsored by Floify, an industry-leading point of sale platform. The Dynamic Apps 2.0 AI-powered enhancement lets lenders tailor application flows by loan type, leading to higher completion rates, less operational back-and-forth and specialty lending without the one-size-fits-all compromise. Hear an interview with Rocket’s Austin Niemiec on the three-year strategic alliance with Compass aimed at expanding home listing inventory to create a significantly enhanced and affordable home buying and selling experience for American families.)

Mortgage rates began the day at the highest levels in a month. The move up versus Friday was only moderate, but Friday’s levels were already fairly close to early Feb’s highs. Oil prices continue putting upward pressure on rates, but with several caveats. It takes quite a big move in oil to motivate enough movement in the bond market to impact mortgage rates. With this morning’s spike being the largest on record at the time, today certainly qualified. But over the course of the day, both oil and bonds reversed course, thus allowing the average lender to adjust rates back in line with Friday’s latest levels. 

Big Round Trip in Oil Prices and Bond Yields

There was no denying the spillover from oil price volatility to the bond market this morning, even if it took quite a lot of the former to move the latter. At its apex, the oil surge was the largest daily move on record at over $26/bbl (just over a 28% jump). This translated to a 10yr yield jump of almost 8bps to start the overnight session. But things were already reversing course quickly by the time European trading began.  Then, by the start of U.S. trading, 10yr yields were already back below 4.18% and continued to fall back to unchanged levels at 4.13% by 2pm ET.  The reversal almost perfectly traced the reversal in oil prices.

Market Movement Recap

08:19 AM Sharply weaker overnight with oil price spike. High yields of 4.21% in 10yr.  Now up only 4.2bps at 4.171.  MBS down just under a quarter point.

10:48 AM Off the weakest levels. MBS down an eighth and 10yr up 2.8bps at 4.157

01:55 PM MBS back to unchanged.  10yr also unchanged at 4.13

Since the outbreak of the military operation in Iran, there have been varying levels of spillover from rising oil prices to the bond market. There have been notable pockets of time where the correlation broke down, but when viewed in less granular detail, oil prices and bond yields have moved higher together over the past week. Now this morning, there’s a new mega-surge in oil (presumably due to Iran’s leadership announcement and its implications for more military escalation) and the correlation is undeniable when viewed over a short time period. Today’s first chart shows there’s no question of that short-term correlation. 

The second chart shows that the correlation is definitely not proportional (the scaling is set to the same proportions used last week in order to illustrate the size of the jump in oil).

Active listings grew 7.9% year over year in February, but just 0.2% month over month, reaching more than 914,000 homes on the market, according to Realtor.com.