The first of half of 2014 saw the lowest average level of mortgage applications in the United States since the second half of 2000. This has occurred in tandem with a 44 basis point drop in mortgage rates since the beginning of the year....
The economic data out of the US recently has been somewhat ”meh” recently. It hasn’t been overly encouraging but it also hasn’t been disastrous. This can be seen in the Citi Economic Surprise Index where the index has been hanging out just below the zero...
US housing starts for May came in below consensus at 1,001K units vs expectations of 1,036K units. Housing starts are still about 9.5% higher than they were a year ago. Regionally, housing starts are strongest in the Midwest while in the Northeast, starts are actually...
Lumber prices are now down nearly 21% from the December peak of $375/bft and are now trading at $297.6/btf. We’ve noted several times how lumber prices (a measure of the health of the US economy) have completely disconnected from stock prices, and today’s action confirms...
Pending home sales rose by only 0.4% in April vs estimates of a 1% month-over-month gain. Pending home sales are down over 9% year-over-year. If you are living in the West or the Northeast than that decline looks great compared to fall they are experiencing...
New home sales came in at 433K annualized in April vs Consensus of 420K. Adding to the good news is that March was revised up by 23K to 407K. Unfortunately, new home sales are still down a little over 4% year-over-year and still haven’t been...
It has been a very quiet week on the US economic report front but today we finally have a string of high profile releases. We will take them in order of release times… Jobless Claims snapped back a sharp 28K jobs to 326k during the...
While house prices rose a solid 0.8% on a seasonally adjusted basis according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index in February, house prices were unchanged according to the not seasonally adjusted series. February tends to have either the largest or the second largest difference between...
New home sales dropped by 14.5% in March and are now down over 13% year-over-year. All four regions are now negative on a year-over-year basis. Meanwhile, median price rose over 11% to a all-time new high of $290K as months’ supply spiked to its highest...
Existing home sales actually slightly beat consensus estimates for March (4.59 million vs 4.56 million), however, they still declined for 7th time in 8 months. The good news is the decline in March was minimal. Average and median home prices also both increased in March....
US industrial production rose by 0.7% in March vs consensus expectations of a 0.4% gain in March. This is even more impressive as February monthly gain was revised up from 0.6% to 1.2%. The 3-month % change, annualized, is now at nearly 7%. This is...
The latest reading for the NAHB Housing Market Index came in slightly below consensus again (47 vs 49). The index was particularly weak looking at the traffic of prospective buyers. This component series remains subdued at 32, well below the highs made in September 2013...
Refi loans are accounting for about half of all mortgage applications which is the lowest amount since July 2009. On the surface this seems like a positive trend back to pre-2008 levels. However, the ABSOLUTE level of mortgage apps is currently only about half of...
The latest data out for US house prices show an increase in February according to CoreLogic. Both including and excluding distressed sales, house prices rose in February after stagnating in the latter half of 2013. Meanwhile, mortgage applications for both purchasing and refinancing remain at...
Today saw the release of Japanese industrial production, the Markit Manufacturing PMI, and housing starts. Unfortunately this latest package of data does little to alter the ongoing trend of a deteriorating Japanese economy. Indeed, industrial production saw the largest one month drop since the earthquake...
