My Blog

The rates are better today than they have been in three or four weeks. The great news is we can lock these rates in all the way to Sunday night.

Finally FHA is at 6% for 30 year fixed conforming. It was 6.25% this morning.

A conforming 30 year fixed is down to 6.25%. Here is the reason why:

Friday's bond market has opened in positive territory as stock prices continue to fall. The major stock indexes are showing losses again as yesterday's major sell-off seems to be carrying into today's trading. The Dow is currently down 58 points while the Nasdaq has fallen 11 points. The bond market is currently up 12/32, pushing the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury Note below 4.00%. This should improve this morning's mortgage rates by approximately .125 of a discount point.

Today's most important data was the release of May's Personal Income and Outlays figures. They showed that personal income rose a whopping 1.7% last month, greatly exceeding forecasts of a 0.4% rise. However, most of the surprise increase was a result of the economic stimulus checks and not due to rising wages. The spending portion of the report revealed a 0.8% rise, which slightly exceeded forecasts. Also worth noting is that an inflation reading in the data came in slightly lower than forecasts, so overall, this data can be considered favorable to bonds and mortgage rates.

The second report of the day was the University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Index's final reading for June. It showed a modest downward revision of 0.3%, meaning consumer confidence was less than expected. This can also be considered good news for bonds, but this revision is not important enough to heavily influence trading or mortgage rates.

Next week doesn't bring us the release of many reports, but the majority of those on the schedule are considered to be of high-importance to the markets. There is no relevant data due to be posted Monday, but Tuesday does bring us one of the more important reports of the week.