Some mortgage stakeholders say Trump’s tariffs would make interest rates rise and housing costs shoot up.

The newly created entity, Rithm Acquisition, is a possible, albeit unlikely, way to finally take its NewRez mortgage lending business public.

If you like your mortgage rate movement boring and minimal, this week’s for you (and last week, and the week before that).  Going all the way back to January 17th, the average lender hasn’t changed their top tier 30yr fixed rate quote by more than 0.05%, and has been operating in an overall range of 0.07%. To get an idea of how narrow that is, a typical highly volatile day involves rates moving by more than .12%.  In stark contrast, the average rate hasn’t changed by even 0.01% since last Thursday. This stability isn’t for lack of apparent inspiration for volatility. Clearly, there are plenty of political developments in the first month of any new presidential administration. Those developments have indeed translated to small scale, in-range volatility in the markets that determine interest rates, but they’ve largely canceled each other out, or been canceled out by other events.  Despite the calm, we wouldn’t advocate a complacent attitude looking forward. Rates can still be impacted by economic data and the next 6 business days bring the heaviest hitting reports of the month (chiefly Friday’s jobs report and next Wednesday’s Consumer Price Index).

Bonds Rally Back to Prevailing Range

The only moderately inconvenient part of the day was the morning hours as bonds lost ground overnight and started out weaker in domestic trading.  That didn’t last long. Yields began falling just after 9am and continued lower after today’s biggest economic report came out weaker than expected (job openings at 7.6m vs 8.0m f’cast). Oil prices took a temporary hit from newswires regarding Trumping increasing pressure on Iran, but as that price spike leveled off, bonds continued to improve. Some news outlets suggest today’s gains had something to do with the Mexico/Canada tariff pause, but that news was out well before the AM weakness. The simplest view is that bonds opted to maintain the prevailing range which has seen 10yr yields hold within 6bps of 4.53 since January 24th.

Econ Data / Events

Job Openings (lower is better for rates)

7.6m vs 8.0m f’cast

Job Quits (lower is better for rates)

3.197m vs 3.064m f’cast 

Market Movement Recap

10:32 AM Weaker overnight, but back near unchanged after JOLTS data.  MBS up 1 tick (.03) and 10yr down .4bps at 4.555

12:31 PM best levels of the day. MBS up an eighth and 10yr down almost 4bps at 4.521

03:11 PM some more gains with mbs up 6 ticks (.19) and 10yr down 4.4bps at 4.516

Bonds initially drifted into slightly weaker territory in the overnight session, but began bouncing back just after 9am ET.  All this in spite of a quick spike in oil prices on an announcement from Trump regarding “maximum pressure” on Iran (intended to counter Iran’s nuclear proliferation and “drive oil exports to zero”).   Bonds continued improving after the mixed JOLTS data.  Job openings aren’t quite as low as they were at the cycle lows in August, but the drop was more than enough to offset the uptick in “quits.”  Both numbers correlate with rate movement (i.e. lower=lower and vice versa).

How’s your ability to predict the weather? Apparently not good if you’re a groundhog. It is not hard to predict how you’ll hear from the IRS, if you do: The IRS always communicates through the mail, never by email or text. (There’s a scam tip you can pass along to your clients.) And LOs have all seen people incorrectly predicting the direction of interest rates and incorrectly predicting a U.S. recession. President Trump is predicting he will improve housing affordability; Mark Cuban predicts the biggest hit to housing affordability in 2025 is homeowner’s insurance, regulated at the state level of course. That is a safe bet, as it is already a major expense in many areas. There’s a lot of news being thrown at our industry, and much of it was discussed at the MBA’s IMB conference last week. In fact, the subject of today’s Advisory Angle at 2PM ET, presented by STRATMOR Group, is “From the Conference Floor: Actionable Insights for Mortgage Lenders from IMB 2025” featuring Garth Graham, David Hrobon, and Sue Woodard discussing the highpoints and key takeaways from the IMB conference. (Today’s podcast can be found here and this week’s is sponsored by Optimal Blue. OB bridges the primary and secondary mortgage markets to deliver the industry’s only end-to-end capital markets platform, helping lenders maximize profitability and operate efficiently so they can help American borrowers achieve the dream of homeownership. Hear an interview with Outamation’s Devang Kamdar on SOC and ISO accreditations and the future of data in the mortgage industry.)

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who was named to be acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has told the agency’s staff to put a halt to all rules, enforcement actions and hiring.

The mortgage securities guarantor told the Government Accountability Office it was held back by the limits of its role and information sharing constraints.

The wholesale and non qm lender said it’s placed Serene Vernon on administrative leave and elevated capital markets officer John Hamel to the role of president.

The president has named Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on an acting basis after firing CFPB Director Rohit Chopra over the weekend.