Mortgage rates remained generally steady this past week, even with the continuing market volatility, and that is helping the purchase market, according to Freddie Mac.

The head of the U.S. central bank said its emergency credit programs were not designed to prop businesses up over the long term.

With mortgage rates plummeting, the refinance share of closed loans from millennial borrowers rose for the third straight month, to the highest level since Ellie Mae began tracking the data in 2016.

Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have spent the better part of three years trying to kill the London interbank offered rate. Now, they're looking to it once again to underpin hundreds of billions of dollars in loans as they seek to rescue their economies.

Lenders implemented stricter underwriting across all loan types in the first quarter as the pandemic upended the economy, the Federal Reserve said in its survey of loan officers.

The Federal Reserve's emergency rescue of the U.S. mortgage market should have set off celebration among lenders trying to keep up with demand from borrowers. Instead, executives at Quicken Loans got a hefty margin call.

Federal Reserve officials restated their pledge to hold the benchmark interest rate near zero and will keep buying bonds, judging that the coronavirus pandemic "poses considerable risks to the economic outlook over the medium term."

Financial institutions could testify before the bipartisan commission overseeing the unprecedented economic aid for industries hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. But without subpoena authority, the panel’s impact may be limited.

Mortgage rates slipped this week as the coronavirus keeps affecting the overall U.S. economy, according to Freddie Mac.

The Federal Reserve's $2.3 trillion loan stimulus includes plans for outstanding commercial mortgage-backed securities and newly issued collateralized loan obligations.