With mortgage rates down, mortgage applications for purchase surged last week, indicating some renewed enthusiasm from potential home buyers. Additionally, the NAHB’s survey of home builders showed what could be a bottom in negative sentiment or at least a reprieve from a terrible 2022. Friday’s...
Investors have been given another slug of wanting housing data this week. First it was building permits which surprised to the downside and today it was pending home sales, which fell 4.9% YoY vs expectations of a 1.8% drop. Both building permits and pending home...
Today, economy watchers were treated to more of the same from the housing market. That is, more weak numbers suggesting we may have seen the peak in housing activity for the cycle. This fits with our earlier analysis that higher lending rates - a function...
Sooner or later, higher mortgage rates (which are keyed off of the 10-year treasury yield) were always bound to start slowing the housing market. It was more a matter of what level of rates would be necessary to take the first bites out of housing....
The latest (March) Case-Shiller Home Price Index was released this morning and there were several noteworthy data points in the report. First, our 3-month diffusion index that measures the number of cities where prices are higher now than they were three months ago increased by...
Corelogic’s home price index came out this morning and showed that home prices across the board, including and excluding distressed sales, are at a 7-year high in the US. Single-family combined homes including distressed sales rose by 1.12% MoM in March. Excluding distressed sales, it...
February housing starts were released this morning and they were pretty terrible. Expectations were for starts to come in around 1.048 million. Instead, housing starts came in at a paltry 897K. Housing starts are now at the level as they were in January 2013....
After starting the year off with a bang (thanks to refinancing activity), US mortgage applications are tumbling back towards the depressed 2014 levels. Mortgage apps fell for the third straight week even as the purchase index rose for the first time in seven weeks....
US existing home sales fell by 4.9% in January to 4.82 million. This is the lowest level since April of last year. The western region remains by far the weakest region while the south remains the strongest. Months supply remained relatively steady at 4.7 months...
As has seemingly been the case all year (or maybe even the past four years), we had a mixed bag of economic releases today in the United States. On the positive side, we had the Chicago Fed National Activity Index post the highest monthly number...
US new home sales underwhelmed again in October. The latest data point came in at 458K SAAR versus consensus of 470K. What really caught are eye was the volatile increase in average and median prices. The average sales price spiked by nearly 28% month-over-month, easily...
Looking out of our office and seeing signs of construction activity across Denver, it can be hard to imagine that 20% of the cities in the S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index are still at least 30% off its all-time high....
All summer long we talked about how mortgage applications were down and couldn’t get off the mat. That looks to finally be changing, at least from a refinancing point of view over the past couple of weeks....
Last week we commented that US mortgage applications weren’t showing the bounce that other housing stats such as housing starts and existing home sales were showing year-to-date. Not only did mortgage applications not bounce back this week, but mortgage applications actually broke down to new lows...
