Delinquencies Tick Down

New home sales came in slightly lower than projected. Actual sales came in at -1% from last month while projections were +3%. This number can vary in the short term as new homes only make up about 15% of the overall purchase market; however, new home sales are still up 32% from this time last year.

A couple of weeks ago, we addressed the rising count of “serious delinquencies” (loans that are 90+ days late on their payment). Black Knight claims that serious delinquencies across the US dropped by over 43k loans in September – the biggest monthly decline since the pandemic started. Loans in early stages of delinquency also saw a large dip as total US delinquencies dropped by 3.1%. This is great news; however, it is important to consider that we have 1.88 M more delinquent loans than we did in September 2019.

Mortgage backed securities are slightly up this morning. The 10 year touched the ceiling that we talked about last week and is now heading down. Again, the big concern for mortgage rates is any positive news regarding a stimulus bill which will push both the stock market and mortgage rates higher. With a strong double ceiling of resistance above mortgage backed securities, we see little benefit to float and hold a strong locking bias.