Mortgage Rates, Inflation, New Construction, Rents
Mortgage Rates and the price of Mortgaged-Backed Securities (MBS) moved sideways this week, ending the week near they started. Rates are down 0.75% from this time last year and just off of 3 year lows. Inflation – the Fed’s favorite measure of inflation, the Personal Consumption Expenditures, came out for December and it creeped up […]
Jobs Update, Home Values, Mortgage Rates & Applications
Mortgage Rates and the price of Mortgaged-Backed Securities ended the week where they started. Rates are down approximately 0.75% from this time last year. Jobs – the BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Report showed that job openings has trended down to 6.5M or a nearly 1M decline year over year. The Challenger Report showed […]
Fed Chair Nominee, Case Shiller Home Values, Rents, Inflation
Fed Chair Nominee – current Fed chair Powell’s term expires on May 15 and Kevin Warsh has been nominated to succeed him. The markets didn’t respond super favorably to this nomination as he is considered more ‘hawkish’ than other potential nominees. Warsh has experience serving on the Fed board of Governors (2006-2011) and has been […]
Mortgage Rates, Inflation, GDP, and Pending Sales
Mortgage Rates and the price of Mortgaged-Backed Securities (MBS) worsened marginally for the second consecutive week. Rates remain near 3-year lows and are down by 0.75% from this time last year. Inflation – the BLS released their Personal Consumption Expenditures Report for both October and November. Both the headline and the Core readings fell from […]
Mortgage Rates, Single Family Rents, Inflation and Mortgage Apps
Mortgages Rates and the price of Mortgaged-Backed Securities (MBS) worsened slightly this week. Rates are down a full percent from this time last year and near the best position we have seen in 3 years. Rents – Cotality release their single-family rent index which showed the single-family rents rose 1.1% year over year in November, […]
Mortgage Rates, Jobs Report, Home Value, Manufacturing
Mortgage Rates and the price of Mortgaged-Backed Securities (MBS) improved this week after Trump’s social media post stating that he is instructing Fannie and Freddie to purchase $200B in mortgage Bonds to help push rates lower. Rates are at their lowest point in the past 3 years. Rates are down 1% from this time last […]
Data Centers, Existing Home Sales, Inflation, and Retail Sales
What are AI data centers doing to your power bill? As a country we are now spending more to build AI data centers than we did to build the entire interstate highway system even when you adjust for inflation. There are estimates that put AI and approximately 1.5% of total GDP and that AI data […]
Mortgage Rates, Fed Update, Pulsenomics Predictions
Mortgage Rates have held relatively stable for the past 3 months, near the best rates we have seen for the previous 3 years. Rates are down nearly 0.5% from this time last year. Forecasting – the Fannie Mae & Pulsenomics Home Price Expectations Survey, which polls the top 150 US economists was released for q4. […]
Energy Prices, Jobs Update, Home Values, and Mortgage Applications
Electric prices have jumped 40% since Feb. 2020 according to the BLS, significantly more than the 26% increase in cost of living. The cost of natural gas has increased significantly as well as demand from data centers that power AI. The Energy Department expects demand to grow 2.4% over the next year. Mortgage Rates were […]
Economic Indicators, Fed Rate Update, Home Values, Rents
Economic Indicators – are we in the first phase of AI layoffs? UPS announced 48,000 layoffs, Amazon announced 14,000 layoffs and we have seen other recent announcements from Accenture, Salesforce, Paramount, Goldman Sachs, Target and even Walmart putting a hiring freeze on – all pointing at AI. Cell phone bans help kids with better grades […]