Bored with you day job? Why not hunt for dinosaur skeles in the vast American countryside? Let’s say you found the cute 15 footer like the one pictured above and split the commission 50/50 with the owner of the property (rightful owner of the bones). The buyer is strapped for cash so they ask for seller financing putting 50% down which you give to the property owner. You are a generous lender so you only charge the current fed funds rate (the overnight rate banks lend each other money at) + 1pt or 3.5%. Set up as a 30-year fix you’d get a monthly payday of $6,623.41. Not bad for an immature specimen, maybe I should use my anthropology degree after all?
Rates – improved over the last couple of days after 4 weeks of steady upward motion. As a reminder when the 10 Year US Treasury note goes up – so do mortgage rates.
GDP – today the initial report or “first look” of GDP was released. The headline figure showed the economy growing at an annualized pace of 3.2% a significantly more robust figure than expectations. Normally you would expect this to hurt mortgage rates but if you look deeper in the report it shows strong inventory but actual sales figures are at their lowest level since Q2 2013.
Appreciation – on average home prices increased nationwide month-over-month and year-over-year. A $300,000 dollar home purchased in Feb. of 2018 is now worth $314,700 (on average).
New Home Sales – are up 3% year-over-year at their highest levels in 1.5 years. The median new home price dropped slightly from last month.
Next Week – is jobs week and the BLS job’s report will be released on Friday. This is always a potential market mover. The Initial Jobless Claims “sample week” report (the one they use in the BLS report) was a strong one which indicates a strong overall report.