Rates Continue Lower due to overseas events

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The U.S. economy continues to gradually move forward. Hey, if it went too fast, rates would shoot up, and who wants that? Friday we learned that consumer's confidence in the U.S. improved in February from a month earlier as more consumers grew optimistic about the outlook for the economy. Pending home sales were essentially unchanged in January, according to the National Association of Realtors. And Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at a revised 2.4% rate in 4Q2013, compared with the 3.2% preliminary rate released a month ago.  GDP grew at a 4.1% rate in 3Q2013. The ISM Chicago business barometer was up slightly in February.

 

This week offers up a full menu of freshly baked economic releases. Today will be Personal Income and Consumption/Spending, Construction Spending, along with a series of Personal Consumption Expenditure numbers. Tomorrow is ISM; Wednesday will be the usual ADP numbers ahead of unemployment Friday. On Thursday are Jobless Claims, a Challenger Job Cuts figure, and Factory Orders. On Friday we'll have the trade balance figures which will be outshined by all the employment data: unemployment rate, nonfarm payrolls, and hourly earnings. On a relative basis, Friday the 10-yr closed at a yield of 2.66% and in the early going today we're at 2.60% (MBS prices appear better by .250 to .375) due to tension in Ukraine causing a flight to quality.

 A quick note about appraisals and ECOA: "We've heard from many lenders and AMCs with concerns about compliance with the new ECOA Valuations Rule that took effect on January 18th.  The industry has focused on the "when" of sending those appraisals to borrowers, but we've seen several companies make a critical mistake on the "HOW" of that mandate.  If the lender or AMC is sending the report electronically, they have to get some acknowledgements from the borrower before they send the appraisal for download. We've just published a white paper that describes this pretty succinctly, and we have a tool to automate that process for any lender or AMC at only 50 cents a throw.  Here's the link to the white paper anyone can download for free that gives a good overview of the regulations and how to comply."


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