Mortgage Rates Flat Ahead of Job Numbers

Mortgage rates were basically even today, even though the mortgage bonds indicated a shift towards the negative side.  AS I mentioned this morning, it was rather a quiet day after the strong improvements yesterday.  Tomorrow begins the employment commentaries after ADP reports its private jobs for March at 7:1AM. Estimates are for 170K new jobs, but ADP data has been substantially stronger than what the forecasts were since the beginning of the year, and have bested the official BLS monthly data.

Beside ADP in the morning, we also get March ISM services sector index, as well at 1:00PM we will get the minutes from the March 15th FOMC meeting of which saw from this the increase in the FF rate.

CoreLogic today out saying home prices in 2016 increased 7.0% but this year prices are expected to increase just 4.7%.

The bellwether 10yr failed again today to break out of its range as 2.32% is pivotal and has stopped any improvements since the beginning of the year. Those still floating may want to look at the gains we have seen these past few weeks and if you are closing soon, it would not be a bad idea to grab this and not look back, as I do not see much improvement in the near future unless we get blown away with poor job numbers, which I do not anticipate whatsoever.

In summary, bonds have managed a nice rally to start off April.   If you have been floating since last week, I think it is wise to go ahead and lock in now if within 30 days of closing.   It seems we have hit the bottom of our range and have been unable to break through.  Plus, we have some high impact data coming later this week and I would not be surprised if investors sold off bonds heading into the data.