Posted To: Mortgage Rate Watch
Mortgage rates moved modestly higher today after holding in roughly the same territory for the past 3 days. This brings them back in line with last Thursday’s levels. In general, trade tensions helped the bond market earlier this week (stronger bonds = lower rates), but the bonds that underlie mortgages didn’t benefit nearly as much as US Treasuries. Additionally, mortgage lenders have had to play it safer than normal amid a rising rate environment and recently higher volatility. The net effect of these factors is that mortgage rates have often not been able to participate too much during the good days, but have still had to take their lumps on the bad days. The caveat to all of the above is that the day-to-day moves have been very small in the grand scheme of things. For instance, today’s…(read more)