From Ted Gosnell at First Home Mortgage
“Mortgage rates ended the week lower from earlier highs, but still little changed from last week’s close.
Ms. Janet Yellen, who has been slated to replace Mr. Ben Bernanke as the new Chairperson of The Federal Reserve, spoke before Congress yesterday and her remarks pretty much mirrored Ben Bernanke’s policies. Janet Yellen’s congressional testimony settled fears by financial markets that tapering of purchases of U.S. Treasuries and mortgage backed securities would begin before March or April of 2014. In other words, it’s probably going to be more of the same at the Fed and this market consensus caused the all important yield on the 10 year U.S. Treasury to drop from 2.78% to 2.69% (currently that yield is at 2.71%) and mortgage rates to return to last week’s lows. Hopefully it will also mean that mortgage rates will remain relatively stable into our spring market.”