Rates – moved back down to historic lows near after Fed meeting on Wednesday that rocked equity markets.
Jobs – the number of people filing for unemployment for the first time continues to decline but remains at an alarming 7X pre-covid numbers and over 2X previous recession highs (600K).
Fed – the Fed met on Wednesday and nearly every single voting member forecasts that the Fed funds rate (the overnight lending rate banks use to lend to other banks) will remain at the 0.25% level through 2022. HELOC’s rates will stay low for many months to come. Their forecasts for GDP and unemployment (below) were alarming.
Home Equity: in 2010 26% of homeowners had negative equity Today only 3% of homeowners are underwater. An incredible 87% of homeowners have over 20% equity in their home!
Appreciation – over the last 12 months homeowners gained an average 6.5% in value and since 2010 home prices increased $106,000 nationwide (homeowners in Portland recognize that regionally this number various significantly).
Applications – were up over 9% from the previous week and purchase applications are now up for the 8th consecutive week showing a 13% gain from this time last year (significant change after being down over 35% in April)
Forbearance – the Mortgage Bankers Association reported that the % of loans in forbearance increased marginally from 8.46% to 8.53% through the end of may. This estimates roughly 4.3 million homeowners are in forbearance plans.