Mortgage Rates Jump Back Up; Housing Starts Explode to 9-Year Highs

Mortgage Rates Jump Back Up; Housing Starts Explode to 9-Year Highs

Mortgage rates may have caught a break yesterday , but today is a different story. Or perhaps it's a different kind of break... a bad one... more of a compound fracture really. Not only did rates resume their move higher, but they skipped right to new 2016 highs, albeit by only a small margin. In fact, not all lenders are in the worst shape of the year today, but the average lender is. An ongoing and frustrating aspect of much of the recent rate drama is that it lacks new, clearly-defined motivation. Naturally, the initial catalyst was the election, but since then, we've seen multiple instances of rates surging higher without being in the presence of anything that would typically motivate such a move. Unfortunately, this is the way momentum can work in financial markets. Think of it like this