Home loan rates moved moderately greater today for the average lending institution, however not for any exciting reasons. Rather, the change has more to do with timing of the underlying market motion.
While it holds true that home loan rates are directly affected by the bond market, mortgage lenders prefer to set rates as soon as daily. From there, they will occasionally make changes if the bond market experiences enough volatility. The catch is that lending institutions are less likely to adjust rates the later it is in the afternoon and if the bond market has actually been changing steadily/gradually.
With all that in mind, yesterday saw a constant, gradual decline in the bond market that continued into the late afternoon. As such, the majority of loan providers didn’t go to the difficulty of changing rates the other day. Simply put, the average loan provider was already intending on raising rates a bit this morning even if the bond market started the day flat. However bonds lost much more ground this morning (before loan providers picked rates for the day).
Bottom line, lenders were entrusted with changing for 2 days of modest weakness simultaneously. The result is a move that is bigger than the typical recent day, but not since the underlying market motion was larger or more unpredictable than average.