Mortgage rates

Consumers may want to strike while the iron’s hot and apply for loans now, before rates get much higher.

Mortgage rates surged 40 basis points since the start of the year as the economy improved.

Servicers struggled to bring back their borrowers as the overall retention rate crept down to a nadir in the fourth quarter, according to Black Knight.

And there are some brawls on the field affecting the direction of business for the rest of this year.

The gap between those that considered it a good or bad time to buy narrowed 10 percentage points in February, the tightest spread since last April, Fannie Mae found.

With the latest growth, interest rates spiked 37 basis points since the calendar flipped to 2021 alongside rising Treasury bond yields.

A slight lift in the purchase market paired with a surprising reversal in the size of the average loan, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

With the pandemic’s radical disruption of the housing market, values grew at the highest rate in eight years, according to CoreLogic.

After several weeks of resistance, mortgage rates are now moving in lockstep with the recent increases in the 10-year Treasury yield.

Servicers could be dealing with approximately 1.8 million distressed properties when the latest forbearance extension ends in June, Black Knight said.