Diamond Prices on lab-grown diamonds are way down, and they aren’t fakes. Recent technology has made it so you can easily ‘grow’ diamonds. You can now purchase a one carat diamond with perfect quality (real diamond) for a wholesale price of $100. If you go to Alibaba, you can purchase them for $120-$150. In fact, you can actually purchase a machine that grows diamonds for approximately $150k. Strangely, lab grown 1carat diamonds still go for about $1,000 here while natural diamonds of that size go for nearly $5,000.
Mortgage Rates – ended the week where they started after the price of Mortgaged Backed Securities moved sideways. Rates are down approximately 0.5% from this time last year.
Home Values Case Shiller, the ‘gold standard’ of home appreciation indices, released their January Report. Home prices increased 0.6% in January and are up 4.1% year over year.
Inflation – the Fed’s favorite measure of inflation, the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE), rose 0.3% and remained steady at a 2.5% year over year increase. The Core rate, which strips out food and energy, rose 0.4% and is up 2.8% year over year. This doesn’t paint a great picture for inflation moving forward as the 6m run rate is closer to 3%.
Rents – Apartment List released their monthly rent report which showed new rents were up 0.6% in March but are down 0.4% year over year. Vacancy is at 6.9%, the highest since 2017.
Mortgage Applications – to purchase homes rose 1% last week and are up 7% year over year. Refinances fell 5.3% but are up 63% year over year. Refinances are making up 40% of applications.