February of 2015 is a Bad Month for Mortgage Rates

Following the recent jobs report, and with the turmoil in Europe showing no signs of subsiding, February has quickly turned into a bad month for mortgage rates. As of the 17th, rates have risen at the fastest day-over-day pace since November 8th of 2013, making this the worst month for mortgage rates since May of 2013.

It’s hard to say what we might look forward to as the month comes to a close. Rates could just as easily turn around as they could get a lot worse. Much of this rides on whether or not Europe turns a corner. Many people anticipate that Europe will continue to slide until the central bank engages in a US-style quantitative easing, which some are expecting to happen sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, every increase in rates here brings on the risk of a long-term rise, so floating is not generally a good option for people without long term time horizons.

March Starts with a Jump in Mortgage Rates

The big news as we start the month comes from pharmaceutical giant Actavis, which announced back in November that it would buy Allergan for $66 billion. In order to raise the money for this purchase, the company issued a bond deal for something in the area of $27 billion. This is the second biggest corporate bond deal ever made, beaten only by Verizon’s $47 billion deal.

This is a lot of debt to hit the market at once. To give it some perspective, consider that the last deals to have made significant waves amounted to only about $11 billion and $6 billion. Since these corporate bonds have an indirect link to the bonds that dictate mortgage rates, all of this debt is bad news for the housing market.

Unfortunately, with big-ticket events on the horizon, we likely cannot expect the market to correct itself anytime soon.


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