Mortgage credit availability increases – The Daily Tearsheet

Vital Statistics:

Stocks are flattish this morning on no real news. Bonds and MBS are down.

Mortgage credit availability increased in August, according to the MBA. “Mortgage credit availability increased slightly in August, driven by a small increase in ARM product offerings, which was similar to what we saw in July,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Vice President and Deputy Chief Economist. “With mortgage rates declining, and some renewed application activity for both purchases and refinances, the demand for ARM loans has increased somewhat, although the overall level of ARM applications remains close to historically low levels. Overall industry capacity seems to have stabilized after some significant declines over the past few years as companies adjusted to a lower volume environment. Combined with recent economic uncertainty, those factors continue to keep credit supply relatively low.”  

I wonder how this chart would look if you included non-QM in this index. Granted non-QM was not all that big before 2020, but still…

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met with Lawrence Lindsey, Kevin Warsh and James Bullard as potential replacements for Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. Interviewing will start after the September FOMC meeting.

Bessent is also interested in reducing the size of the Fed’s balance sheet via organic methods. Unfortunately the WAC of the Fed’s MBS portfolio is way out of the money, so any sort of normal refi wave probably won’t have much of an impact on prepay speeds.

Marketing Tools for mortgage companies

I am accepting ads for this blog if you would like to make an announcement, highlight something your company is offering or want more visibility. I am running a special for new clients as well. I offer white-label services which give you the ability to use this content for your own daily emails. The blog has thousands of subscribers / followers and an open rate around 50%. Please feel free to reach out to brent@thedailytearsheet.com if you would like to discuss this further.