Mortgage News Daily

Bonds weathered their biggest day of selling since September today and their only notable day of selling since the recent downtrend in rates began in mid-October. The blame game was simple: CPI was much higher than expected and there were no silver linings in the report's internal components. Multiple Fed speakers (including Warsh 2 weeks ago) have reiterated the Fed's focus on inflation as opposed to the labor market. Even before the data, Waller said a 0.3 core CPI reading could mean a 50bp rate hike in December (and 0.3 is what we got). Fed Funds Futures and shorter-dated Treasuries logically led the selling, but it was big enough to still hit 10yr yields for 10bps. The potential for Tuesday to mark a shift in the trend should be respected as a possibility, but not necessarily a foregone conclusion. We may have some extra volatility associated with the mid-week holiday closure and the true fate of the trend will depend on more than just inflation. That said, it definitely makes it less likely that the rally can continue without new fuel.

Bonds began the overnight session in roughly unchanged territory and were mostly sideways until just after 8am when Trump said "we don't need a deal with Iran." Oil prices and bond yields spiked in response. There was a modest recovery in response to NVDA announcing Huang resigning as CEO but now more selling pressure as the NASDAQ recovers at the 9:30am NYSE open.

“What is the most common question Finnish detectives ask suspects? ‘What were you doing the night between November and May?’” There will be less daylight in the Northern Hemisphere until the Winter Solstice on December 21st, with lots of weather, and mortgage news, between now and then. Old mortgage vets recall the end of November as traditionally being the time that Freddie and Fannie announce their loan limits for the next year. Given the increase in non-Agency lending over the last few years, this has lost some of its significance, but it will still have a ripple effect through the industry. Certainly loan officers can use it for marketing purposes and try to add some value. Along those lines, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) has a write up on the reasons to own a home which is a short must-read for any originator to better understand a client. But then we have Better offering up things to think about when not using an agent to buy a home. (Today’s podcast can be found here. This week’s ‘casts are presented by Truework, a Checkr company, the one verification solution to replace in-house waterfalls. Verify any borrower with a VOIEA solution that automates the entire process to quickly deliver the most accurate and complete reports with broad GSE coverage. Today’s has an interview with Private Money Funding’s Ryan Hermansky on how private lenders are filling gaps left by traditional banks in commercial real estate by offering flexible, asset-backed financing with conservative underwriting.)

Thursdays are frequently "fun" in the world of mortgage rate reporting because that's when Freddie Mac releases its weekly rate survey. Despite updating its methodology several years ago, Freddie's survey still relies on rate quotes entered by humans and it is still an average of the 5 business days ending on the Wednesday of any given week. That means Freddie's survey result can be quite outdated on weeks with significant movement on Tue-Thu. Why should we care? Simply put, the Freddie survey has been around since the 70s and is still widely cited by many news agencies as the week's single definitive take on the direction of mortgage rates. Meanwhile, back in the real world, rates move daily and sometimes several times per day. Daily movement since the last Freddie survey is problematic. Rates fell and remained low on Thu-Mon. They were quite a bit higher by Tuesday, but that's the last day counted in this week's survey. In other words Freddie had to take an average of 3 days that were much lower than the previous mark and only 1 day that was higher. Here's the simple math: Freddie is reporting a 0.07% decline, week over week. From the time the last Freddie survey came out, rates are actually UP 0.25% to the highest levels in more than 3 weeks

Bonds sold off fairly sharply today and the motivations transcended today's menu of market moving events. If we wanted to focus only that menu, it's main selections included Trump comments on the U.S. not needing a deal with Iran, a stronger showing in stocks, NVDA drama failing to tank tech stocks, and a bevy of hawkish Fed comments. To be fair, the selling perfectly aligned with Fed rate expectations for the middle of 2027, but our contention is that those expectations moved more quickly than the underlying motivations suggested. In order to round out the bearishness, we need to consider follow-through momentum from Tuesday's CPI as well as the breakout from the rally trend. That rally was predicated on a tech sector flight to safety that seems to have run out of steam for now.

This morning's Producer Price Index (PPI) came out as expected. The components that impact core PCE were also uneventful. Stocks and bonds initially rallied but the gains were erased in less than 20 minutes. Higher oil prices coincided with the bounce toward higher yields, but the longer-term correlation remains weak enough that we wouldn't read too much into that. After 9:30am, stocks are selling off enough to bring bond yields just a hair lower from intraday highs. All-in-all, we suspect the modest weakness in 10yr Treasuries is best viewed through the lens of traders squaring yesterday's curve trading positions amid lighter mid-November liquidity. 5yr yields just hit'unchanged' levels and MBS are close to doing the same.

Existing-home sales had another rough month, and just hit their lowest level since August 2010. Mortgage rates are largely to blame.

Mortgage applications bounced back in the latest week, with both purchase and refinance activity moving higher. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported a 6.2% increase in total application volume for the week ending November 6, 2026. NOTE: That Nov 6th date is important as it marked the bottom of the range for interest rates after a nice decline that began in mid October. Rates have risen sharply since then so all that follows is likely a bit of a retrospective. In other words, application demand will probably fall again in next week's data thanks to this week's higher rates. Purchase applications led the improvement, rising 8% on a seasonally adjusted basis, while refinances increased 5%. Despite the weekly gains, both categories remain well below year-ago levels. Purchase applications were still 18% below year-ago levels , while refinance activity was down 57% . The refinance share of total applications held steady at 39.8%, while adjustable-rate mortgage applications accounted for 10.9% of activity, down slightly from the previous week. “The declining trend in rates helped to spur stronger application activity, although the pace of purchase and refinance applications remain considerably lower than a year ago,” said MBA's Joel Kan. FHA and VA purchase applications saw particularly strong gains. The FHA rate fell below 7% for the first time in several weeks, reaching 6.98%, more than 20 basis points below the conforming rate. It is important to note: Kan references the Freddie Mac rate survey here, and real rates have risen materially in the past few days.

In 3 short days, the average top tier 30yr fixed mortgage rate has risen 0.32% to 7.50%, erasing a vast majority of the improvement seen over the past 5 weeks. Today's increase wasn't nearly as sharp as each of the previous 2 days, but it wasn't small either.

Bonds lost ground on Friday, but not for any new, overt reasons. At times, weakness coincided with higher oil prices, but we don't love that explanation considering oil was higher on Monday when yields were substantially lower. PPI data is also not a compelling market mover as it came in right in line with forecasts and doesn't look like it will pass much through to core PCE. Given that short term yields rallied (2yr still down 2bps), much of today's volatility could simply be explained by curve trading amid lighter liquidity. In the bigger picture, the decisive selling pressure of the past 2 sessions basically leveled off and now we wait for the next shoe to drop.