Optimal Blue and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis recently worked together to enable the real-time distribution of Optimal Blue Mortgage Market Indices (OBMMI) on the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) platform.
FRED, created and maintained by the research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, is a free online database consisting of hundreds of thousands of economic data time series from national, international, public and private sources. The inclusion of indices that depict the daily movement of mortgage rates provides lenders and investors with daily insight into observed transaction activity, as well as greater visibility into key drivers of mortgage pricing.
“As the only transaction-based set of mortgage rates available to the industry and beyond, OBMMI establishes transparency beyond what is offered by lenders to what is actually being locked by consumers across 35 percent of all mortgage transactions nationwide,” explains Rick Allen, vice president of business transformation at Optimal Blue. “Our new collaboration with FRED enables Optimal Blue to deliver this near real-time visibility to even more recipients that are thoroughly invested in this data.”
OBMMI was created by Optimal Blue to provide mortgage and finance professionals with greater visibility into how key credit factors impact mortgage pricing. Based on actual locked rates, each of the 16 mortgage rate indices are developed around the most popular mortgage loan products and the primary credit-related attributes that impact mortgage pricing. OBMMI can be compared through compelling, interactive, and configurable visualizations to provide an unprecedented level of daily insight into mortgage rate trends.
Photo: Rick Allen
