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 […]
ADU Income, Contract Fallout, Retail Sales, Home Values
ADU Income – using ADU income to qualify for a purchase or rate/term refinance is now easier as Fannie Mae will allow income from the ADU unit to bolster an applicant’s qualifying income. Important to note that it can only account for 30% of the borrower’s income (if they borrower made $10,000 a month, they […]
Delinquencies, Home Sales (new & used), Inflation, and Mortgage Apps
Mortgage Rates – increased this week as the price of Mortgaged-Backed Securities (MBS) declined after nearly 3 months of steady gains. Rates are up approximately 1/8% from this time last year. Inflation – the Fed’s preferred inflation index, the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE), rose 0.3% in August and ticked up from 2.6% to 2.7% year […]
Did you Hit the Pricing Window? Home Values, Fed Governors & CPI
Early this week I locked a client purchasing a primary home at the best 30yr fixed conventional par rate* I’ve locked since October 2022. I’m certainly not a huge producing loan officer, but in that time period I’ve closed 100 loans and about 85% of them were conventional. If we look back over the previous […]
Mortgage Fraud, GDP, Rents, Inflation
Mortgage Fraud has captured headlines in 2025 with prominent politicians in the limelight but the Cotality report for Q2 shows only a 1.4% year over year increase, with fraud happening in 1 of 116 applications. Data does show, however, that a particular segment is seeing a large increase with investment and multifamily transaction, particularly with […]
Mortgage Rates, Home Sales, Rents, and Applications
Mortgage Rates – improved this week after Fed Chair Powell’s comments on the job market slowdown being larger than he previously believed. Mortgaged-Backed Securities are in the best position they have been since September 2024. Rates are in the same position they were this time last year. Existing Home Sales came in slightly better than […]
Rate Update, Jobs Report, Home Values
Mortgage Rates – improved this week to their best levels since April. The price of Mortgaged-Backed Securities jumped up in response to a lack luster jobs report. Rates are unchanged from this time last year. Jobs – the BLS Jobs Report reported only 73,000 jobs created in July, weaker than estimates of 110,000. The raw […]