Mortgage Rates Seeing Some Underlying Pressure Ahead of Inflation Data

Mortgage rates were effectively unchanged on Thursday with the average lender very close to the best levels in over a year. But when it comes to the underlying bond market and the rates available to consumers, there are some dislocations that suggest risk is increasing. Specifically, bonds lost ground today. This normally implies higher mortgage rates. But the timing and magnitude of bond market losses can dictate the size of mortgage rate changes as well as the timing. In today's case, bonds were in better shape this morning when mortgage lenders published their daily rate offerings.  There was additional bond market weakness as the day progressed, but not enough to trigger a mid-day rate change from lenders (mortgage lenders prefer to avoid mid-day changes unless bonds make bigg