From the category archives:
The National Association of Realtors just released the latest data on pending home sales. The June figures continued the recent trend of improvement …
* Pending home sales climbed 3.6% in June. That was much better than the 0.7% gain that economists were expecting. Last month’s 0.1% gain was also revised higher, to 0.8%.
* On a [...]
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Yesterday’s record 2-year Treasury Note auction went off fairly well. Today’s 5-year auction? Not so much. The Treasury tried to sell a record $39 billion of notes. Pre-auction talk was for the notes to sell at a yield of 2.635%. Instead, they went off at 2.689%, more than 5 basis points higher. The bid-to-cover ratio [...]
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The housing market data has taken on an improving tone of late. The June existing home sales report was no exception. Let’s get to the details …
* Existing home sales gained 3.6% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.89 million units from a downwardly revised 4.72 million in May. That was roughly in line [...]
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I feel like it’s Thanksgiving afternoon, with a feast of stories to chew on today. In no particular order …
* The government is finally going to allow one of these ne’er-do-well financial firms fail, apparently. I’m talking about CIT Group, the commercial lender that’s been struggling for months. Apparently, the Treasury, Federal Reserve and especially [...]
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Hope everyone is having a decent Monday. One item that’s worth noting this afternoon is the latest budget update from the U.S. Treasury. Turns out the June deficit came in at $94.3 billion, the first time there’s been a deficit for that month since 1991. It’s also the largest June deficit ever. The year-to-date tally [...]
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I said back when the Obama administration’s mortgage modification programs were being rolled out that they would likely NOT meet the ambitious expectations spelled out by policymakers. There are several reasons why mortgage servicers and investors are not as willing (or able) to modify loans as aggressively as the politicians want them to. A great [...]
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The American Bankers Association just released its latest look at quarterly delinquencies for a wide variety of consumer credit products. Here’s a peek at what the group’s numbers showed:
* The composite index that tracks delinquencies on all products rose to 3.23% in Q1 2009. That was up ever so slightly from 3.22% a quarter earlier, [...]
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Bloomberg has a great pair of stories on economic stimulus and the locus of economic power in the world. The first piece chronicles how Obama administration adviser Laura Tyson gave a speech urging a second economic stimulus package. She suggested the first stimulus was too small and that the economy “is a sicker patient” than [...]
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Mortgage applications dropped sharply in the week of June 26. The Mortgage Bankers Association’s application index (chart above) plunged 18.9% to 444.8, the lowest level since late November. The refinance index tanked 30%, while the purchase index slipped 4.5%. This occurred despite the fact mortgage rates dropped for the third week (to 5.34% from a [...]
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Today, the Wall Street Journal elucidated a point I have made repeatedly in many venues. Heading off a potential foreclosure tied to the STRUCTURE of a mortgage is a lot easier than avoiding a foreclosure related to broader ECONOMIC trends (falling house prices, rising unemployment, etc.). This is one reason the foreclosure problem cannot be [...]
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