Morning Report: Mortgage credit tightening slightly 12/9/15

Posted on December 9, 2015 by Brent Nyitray

Stocks are lower this morning on no real market-moving news. Bonds and MBS are down.

Mortgage Applications rose 1.2% as refis rose 3.5% and purchases were flat.

Wholesale inventories fell by 0.1% as sales were flat.

Mortgage credit availability fell in November, according to the MBA. This means credit standards increased. Conventional loans tightened while government loans loosened slightly. While mortgage credit availability has increased steadily since the US residential real estate market bottomed in 2012, it is still a shadow of its former self.

The MBA has its latest survey on mortgage bank profitability and volume. Last quarter, the average gain on a mortgage for independent mortgage bankers and the mortgage subsidiaries of banks fell from $1,522 to $1,238 (or about 55 basis points). On a year-over-year basis, it was an increase from $897 (or 42 bps) in the third quarter of 2014. Average volume in the third quarter was $614 million (or 2,609 units), which was the second highest print since 2008. Lots of useful stats in this survey.

While home prices have been appreciating at a mid single digit clip, rental prices have been increasing even faster. Last year, nearly half of all renters spent at least 30% of their in rent, which qualifies as cost-burdened. A quarter paid 50%. This is creating an affordable housing problem, especially in urban areas.

The Fannie Mae Home Purchase Sentiment Index fell a couple of points as increasing prices and limited inventory are making things difficult for potential buyers. Second, consumers are becoming a touch more pessimistic about their future incomes.

Filed under: Morning Report | 27 Comments »

Not Radicalized

Posted on December 9, 2015 by novahockey

I’m tired of hearing about how someone became radicalized. It’s a completely backwards way of viewing this problem.

From NBC:

“Counterterrorism officials also told NBC News that Farook and Malik were making preparations for some time to “take care of both grandma and the baby.” The couple lived in a Redlands, California residence with their 6-month-old daughter and Farook’s 62-year-old mother, Rafia Farook. They left their daughter with Rafia Farook on the morning of the attack.

Nobody radicalized them. They had a choice. And they choose to be evil. That’s all there is to it. Nobody twisted their arm or filled their head with nonsense. They went looking for an excuse and found one ready made.

Also, the press lies on mass shootings. And the only reasons this even matters, is we can’t even decided what rights are.

From Popehat:

I hear “my right not to be shot outweighs your right to own a gun.” This strikes me as perfectly idiotic. But it’s no more idiotic than an imagined right not to be criticized or offended, which is far more popular in modern America.

We’ve lost the plot. We don’t know where rights come from, we don’t know or care from whom they protect us, we don’t know how to analyze proposed restrictions to them, and brick by brick we’ve built a culture that scorns rights in the face of real or imagined risks. It is therefore inevitable that talk about Second Amendment rights will be met with scorn or shrugs, and that discussions of what restrictions on rights are permissible will be mushy and unprincipled.

So here’s how this places out ..
Two people who looked for a justification to kill are stripped of their agency by Western liberals (aka paternalistic racists), who then lie about the extent of a different problem so they can preen in front of their credentialed but ignorant peers and post pithy, yet asinine things on Facebook about how we need to curtail rights they do not understand and would happily surrender because they reject the idea that evil exists and think that things would be great if we just gave peace a chance.

Filed under: guns | 17 Comments »