AI is definitely a discussion topic among lenders: what is it, will it help the borrower, will it help the lender… How would you like every hand motion you make monitored by your boss through AI? Well, welcome to the new world order. SIFMA has created this 10-step guide to help streamline “gen AI” implementation, without compromising safety or compliance. In other artificial intelligence news, thousands of artists are calling for an AI art auction to be cancelled, calling it “mass theft.” In a combination of technology and housing, we have “foldable and shippable” houses, Last fall, Boxabl co-founder Galiano Tiramani shared his frustration of regulations and code setbacks that kept its homes from reaching the masses. Kicking off 2025 at a different pace, this year has brought some good news to Boxabl as it have gained official approval of their flagship product, the Casita, under the residential building code in Nevada, where the company’s three factories operate. Hey, if the Agencies will lend on them, why not? (Today’s podcast can be found here and this week’s is sponsored by Sagent. Sagent brings the modern experience customers now expect from loan originations to loan servicing, where lifetime customer relationships are managed and grown. Hear an interview with HomeLight’s Nick Friedman on findings from a survey of originators about borrower preferences and technology adoption.) Lender and Broker Products and Services Have you ever wanted to be in the room where servicing innovation comes to life? It’s all happening at ICE Experience 2025. Servicers joining ICE’s mortgage technology experts at the Wynn Las Vegas from March 10-12 will get a front-row seat as they explore how ICE is making servicing simple. ICE Experience includes demos of ICE’s latest, cutting-edge innovations and a variety of sessions where you’ll learn how ICE is creating efficiencies to support HELOCs, loan boarding, customer retention, loss mitigation and more. Review the ICE Experience agenda and make sure to add sessions to your calendar so you don’t miss out on one of the biggest mortgage industry conferences of the year.

As of yesterday afternoon, bonds could seemingly do no wrong this week.  Every opportunity for traders to circle the wagons and push back against the persistent rally was instead met with more rallying.  Now today, we’re finally seeing the first somewhat legitimate selling pressure since the middle of last week (emphasis on “somewhat”). AM data created some indecision due to a combination of weaker jobless claims and stronger Durable Goods/PCE (notably, the PCE data was a revision to stale Q4 data, so taken with a grain of salt). 10yr yields have been fairly sideways since the data, but MBS have gradually improved.

The National Association of Realtors released its Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI) today, which measures home purchase contracts that have been signed, but not yet closed. The index typically correlates with existing home sales in the following month. While January’s contract signings were only down 4.6% versus December, that was enough for the index to inch down to the lowest levels since data-keeping began in 2001. “It is unclear if the coldest January in 25 years contributed to fewer buyers in the market, and if so, expect greater sales activity in upcoming months,” said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. “However, it’s evident that elevated home prices and higher mortgage rates strained affordability.” To be sure, mortgage rates hit their highest recent levels in January but fell short of the levels seen in early 2024. At the time, Pending sales had fallen nearly as low as today’s report, thus adding some evidence for the negative impact from higher rates. [thirtyyearmortgagerates] The following bullet points show how each region changed from the previous month (and from the previous year).
Northeast

+0.3 (-0.5)

Midwest

-2.0 (-2.7)

South

-9.2 (-8.8)

West 

-1.2 (-4.5)

The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, first introduced during the Obama administration and brought back by Biden, was unworkable, opponents said.

Some precedents from Trump’s first term do point to a scenario where depositories could re-enter the government mortgage market, according to one expert.

Hunton Andrews Kurth explores what makes an attractive shell entity.

The company missed analysts’ quarterly forecasts on operating earnings per share due to higher mortgage servicing rights amortization and operating expenses.

Treasuries gained for a sixth straight session. Morgan Stanley say the 10-year has scope to fall back below 4% if the prevailing view on the Fed shifts.

Bonds Can Seemingly Do No Wrong

Another day, another example of bonds ignoring the potentially negative cues while continuing to react from the positive ones. Correlation may not be causality, but stock losses have appeared to help facilitate bond buying on multiple occasions since last Friday. Today brought another example with stocks start to falter around 12:30ET following headlines regarding a 25% tariff rate on European imports. Even as stocks have moved off the lows heading into after hours trading, bond yields didn’t follow.  That leaves us at another “best since early December” level in both Treasuries and MBS.

Econ Data / Events

New Home Sales

657k vs 680k f’cast, 698k prev

Market Movement Recap

09:48 AM Slow, sideways morning so far.  MBS unchanged and 10yr up 0.2bps at 4.3

12:43 PM Best levels of the day with MBS up 1 tick (.03) and 10yr down 2.3bps at 4.274

03:28 PM New best levels.  MBS up 5 ticks (.16) and 10yr down 5.1bps at 4.246

While the economic calendar may look a little busy today, there are, once again, no big ticket market movers in play.  The last time data had an impact was last week.  Since then, the notion of general concern over the economic outlook has helped bonds. Looked at another way, bond gains have frequently coincided with stock losses. As such, we might be concerned when/if stocks bounce higher. But on each of the past two sessions, such bounces have failed to sow fear among bond traders, and the same pattern is repeating this morning.