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Daily average mortgage rates jumped to their highest level since last November after last week’s disappointing inflation report
SEATTLE, April 18, 2024–(BUSINESS WIRE)–(NASDAQ: RDFN) —The median U.S. home-sale price increased 5% from a year earlier during the four weeks ending April 14, bringing it to $380,250—just $3,095 shy of June 2022’s all-time high. That’s according to a new report from Redfin (redfin.com), the technology-powered real estate brokerage.
The average daily mortgage rate this week surpassed 7.4%, the highest level since last November, after a hotter-than-expected inflation report and the Fed’s confirmation that interest-rate cuts will be delayed. The combination of high mortgage rates and prices have brought homebuyers’ median monthly housing payment to a record $2,775, up 11% year over year.
There are signals that buyers are out there touring homes despite rising rates. Mortgage-purchase applications are up 5% week over week, and Redfin’s Homebuyer Demand Index—a measure of requests for tours and other buying services from Redfin agents—is near its highest level in seven months. Chen Zhao, Redfin’s economic research lead, said some house hunters are hoping to buy now because they’re concerned rates could rise more, and others have grown accustomed to elevated rates and pushed down their home-price budget accordingly.
“Home sales are slower than usual, but there are still people buying and selling because if not now, when?” said Connie Durnal, a Redfin Premier agent in Dallas. “I’ve had a few prospective buyers touring homes for the last several years, since mortgage rates started going up, and they wish they would have bought last year because prices and rates are even higher now. My advice to them: If you can afford to and you find a house you love, buy now. There’s no guarantee that rates will come down soon.”
For more of Redfin economists’ takes on the housing market, including how current financial events are impacting mortgage rates, please visit Redfin’s “From Our Economists” page.
Leading indicators
Indicators of homebuying demand and activity |
||||
Value (if |
Recent change |
Year-over-year |
Source |
|
Daily average 30-year fixed mortgage rate |
7.41% (April 17) |
Up from 7% one month earlier; highest level since November 2023 |
Up from 6.61% |
Mortgage News Daily |
Weekly average 30-year fixed mortgage rate |
6.88% (week ending April 11) |
Up just slightly from 6.82% a week earlier |
Up from 6.27% |
Freddie Mac |
Mortgage-purchase applications (seasonally adjusted) |
Increased 5% from a week earlier (as of week ending April 12) |
Down 10% |
Mortgage Bankers Association |
|
Redfin Homebuyer Demand Index (seasonally adjusted) |
Up 8% from a month earlier (as of week ending April 14) |
Down 11% |
Redfin Homebuyer Demand Index, a measure of requests for tours and other homebuying services from Redfin agents |
|
Touring activity |
Up 33% from the start of the year (as of April 14) |
At this time last year, it was up 23% from the start of 2023 |
ShowingTime, a home touring technology company |
|
Google searches for “home for sale” |
Unchanged from a month earlier (as of April 14) |
Down 17% |
Google Trends |
Key housing-market data
U.S. highlights: Four weeks ending April 14, 2024 Redfin’s national metrics include data from 400+ U.S. metro areas, and is based on homes listed and/or sold during the period. Weekly housing-market data goes back through 2015. Subject to revision. |
|||
Four weeks ending |
Year-over-year |
Notes |
|
Median sale price |
$380,250 |
4.7% |
|
Median asking price |
$413,225 |
6.4% |
Biggest increase since Oct. 2022; all-time high |
Median monthly mortgage payment |
$2,775 at a 6.88% mortgage rate |
10.6% |
All-time high |
Pending sales |
86,086 |
-2.3% |
|
New listings |
93,332 |
10.8% |
|
Active listings |
832,748 |
9.6% |
|
Months of supply |
3.3 months |
+0.4 pts. |
4 to 5 months of supply is considered balanced, with a lower number indicating seller’s market conditions. |
Share of homes off market in two weeks |
42.6% |
Down from 44% |
|
Median days on market |
35 |
-1 day |
|
Share of homes sold above list price |
29.2% |
Essentially unchanged |
|
Share of homes with a price drop |
5.9% |
+1.6 pts. |
|
Average sale-to-list price ratio |
99.2% |
+0.2 pts. |
Metro-level highlights: Four weeks ending April 14, 2024 Redfin’s metro-level data includes the 50 most populous U.S. metros. Select metros may be excluded from time to time to ensure data accuracy. |
|||
Metros with biggest |
Metros with biggest |
Notes |
|
Median sale price |
Anaheim, CA (24.8%) Providence, RI (14.6%) Nassau County, NY (14.3%) West Palm Beach, FL (13.5%) New Brunswick, NJ (13.1%) |
San Antonio, TX (-1%) |
Declined in just 1 metro |
Pending sales |
San Jose, CA (25.6%) San Francisco (11.2%) Oakland, CA (7.1%) Columbus, OH (6.7%) Seattle (6.4%) |
Nassau County, NY (-14.9%) Atlanta (-13.6%) Houston (-11.6%) Riverside, CA (-10.8%) Fort Lauderdale, FL (-10%) |
Increased in 14 metros |
New listings |
San Jose, CA (46.6%) Sacramento, CA (27.6%) Phoenix (27.4%) Jacksonville, FL (27.2%) Dallas (22.9%) |
Newark, NJ (-12.4%) Providence, RI (-6.3%) Milwaukee (-4.6%) Chicago (-4.5%) Detroit (-3.1%) |
Declined in 9 metros |
To view the full report, including charts, please visit:
https://www.redfin.com/news/housing-market-update-home-prices-mortgage-rates-increase
About Redfin
Redfin (www.redfin.com) is a technology-powered real estate company. We help people find a place to live with brokerage, rentals, lending, title insurance, and renovations services. We run the country’s #1 real estate brokerage site. Our customers can save thousands in fees while working with a top agent. Our home-buying customers see homes first with on-demand tours, and our lending and title services help them close quickly. Customers selling a home can have our renovations crew fix it up to sell for top dollar. Our rentals business empowers millions nationwide to find apartments and houses for rent. Since launching in 2006, we’ve saved customers more than $1.6 billion in commissions. We serve more than 100 markets across the U.S. and Canada and employ over 4,000 people.
Redfin’s subsidiaries and affiliated brands include: Bay Equity Home Loans®, Rent.™, Apartment Guide®, Title Forward® and WalkScore®.
For more information or to contact a local Redfin real estate agent, visit www.redfin.com. To learn about housing market trends and download data, visit the Redfin Data Center. To be added to Redfin’s press release distribution list, email [email protected]. To view Redfin’s press center, click here.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240418348073/en/
Contacts
Redfin Journalist Services:
Kenneth Applewhaite, 206-414-8880
[email protected]
Source: finance.yahoo.com
In addition, we can see the price reductions ticking up each week. They aren’t at a scary level, people are buying homes, but it’s notably softer on pricing than last year at this time.
Mortgage rates seem to have finally settled down. The Fed met last week and we escaped dramatic changes in the markets. I was worried that we might come out of that meeting with a spike in mortgage rates but that didn’t materialize so we got lucky.
I like to point out that consumers are more sensitive to changes in mortgage rates than to the absolute levels, and since rates are now basically unchanged for the month, just easing down from the early March peak of 7.2%, sellers and buyers are tip-toeing back into the market.
As a result, we continue to see the signals that home sales volume will grow this year and prices will be mostly flat. The price appreciation signals last year were stronger than they are now.
The available inventory of unsold homes continued to climb last week.
Inventory will cross over 2020 levels by July. We’ll finish the year with over 600,000 homes on the market unless rates reverse and fall quickly.
Three takeaways from the inventory data now:
1. Growing inventory this year means more sales can happen. More sellers means more sales will happen.
2. Year-over-year inventory growth points to weaker demand and is one of the signals that home prices won’t climb this year. We currently have 24% more homes on the market than a year ago.
3. The longer mortgage rates stay higher, the more inventory will grow closer to the old levels. If you’re a homebuyer and you’re waiting for mortgage rates to fall before you swoop in for a deal, recognize that even slightly lower rates will spur demand more than supply so inventory will start falling and selection and competition will be worse.
Each week this spring we’ve been tracking the new listings volume. Last week we saw just over 60,000 new listings added to the inventory with another 17,000 new listings / immediate sales. In total, new listings data is 14% more than last year. April is looking good for home sales growth.
A year with 5.5 to 6 million home sales would need probably 80,000 new listings of single family homes right now. And we have 60,000, so there simply aren’t enough homes for sale to hit the big sales numbers, but the lid is being lifted. We can see obvious growth.
As supply increases, the rate of sales is starting to pick up compared to a year ago. We can measure home sales in real time by tracking all the homes that moved to contract pending status this week. These “pendings” aren’t yet sold. They’ll spend 30 or 40 days in contract and the sales will mostly close in April or May.
There were 67,000 new contracts for single family homes this week compared to only 62,000 in the same week last year. There were another 15,000 condos into contract. This annualizes to only 4.3 million home sales, without any seasonal adjustment. So obviously the rate of sales is still pretty slow, which makes sense given the high mortgage rates. But the sales rate is climbing. The rate of new contracts is 8% more than last year but still 15% fewer than March of 2022, when buyers were desperately trying to get their deals done as rates were rising.
It looks like April will see decent home sales growth over 2023 but won’t overtake 2022 sales volumes until after July of this year. July of 2022 was when supply and demand fell precipitously. If mortgage rates stay stabilized in the upper 6s, these trends look durable to me.
Last week, all the current price measures actually had pretty healthy gains. When we look at all the homes on the market, the median price is now $439,000. That is up a fraction this week and just a little bit higher than last year. Home prices climb this time of year before peaking in June as the best inventory, the most new listings, and the best demand is in the market. This week’s price increase is right in the normal range for the end of March.
The price of new listings took a healthy jump this week, up 1% to $424,900. That’s nearly 4% higher than a year ago. It’s also to be expected that the price of new listings each week in the spring lurch higher. There is no signal of big home price changes in this leading indicator, but it’s nice that this move is up.
Four years ago in March 2022, we were at the start of the pandemic lockdown and we could see the price of the new listings drop very quickly. That price decline only last for three weeks though. And the price of the new listings was one of the important factors that showed us very quickly how there would be no housing crash as a result of the crisis.
The price of the homes going into contract across the country are holding up but also not accelerating. The median price of the new contracts this week was $389,900 — that’s up a fraction from last week and 4% more than a year ago. Home prices peaked in May of 2022 and didn’t surpass that during last year’s spring season. I expect we’ll hit new all-time highs for home prices in the next month or so, assuming these current trends hold.
Most of the signals in the data last week were pretty optimistic. If there is one factor to temper than optimism, it’s the price reductions. The percent of homes on the market with price cuts from their original list price ticked up to 31.4% this week. There are more homes on the market now that have felt the need to reduce asking price than there were a year ago. Last year’s market strength in Q1 and Q2 led to 5% home-price growth for the full year of 2023. We have less strength in pricing now than we did last year.
While price reductions are in the “normal” range, they are higher now than any March in many years. There are more sellers now who have reduced the asking prices on their homes than in any March in over a decade. This last decade was a very strong one for homebuyer demand, so we haven’t seen a “normal” market in a very long time.
This is a signal to pay attention to. It’s hard to see how home prices will grow nationally this year under these circumstances. We can see buyers in the market, but there is no signal of them pushing home prices higher. Sellers who over-price are being forced to reduce.
In March 2022, there were still very few overall homes with price reductions, but that was changing rapidly. The slope started to climb very quickly, especially in April and May of that year. The number peaked in November 2022 with 43% of the homes on the market needing price cuts. That November peak corresponded to home sales price declines four to six months later. That’s why this data is worth watching so closely: These price cuts tell us about demand now, which turns into sales several months down the road.
We can see homebuyers are very sensitive to mortgage rate moves. We can see the price reductions data adjust exactly in the moments that mortgage rates jump higher.
Source: housingwire.com
While buyers now have slightly more options, housing costs remain historically high. The typical mortgage payment is $2,671, just $47 below last October’s record level. These high costs have contributed to an 8% decline in pending sales (the biggest drop in five months) and a fourth consecutive week of declining mortgage applications. Despite these challenges, … [Read more…]
The US housing market should experience a warm return this spring, thanks to calming economic data.
The average rate for a 30-year loan declined to 6.63% from 6.69% the week prior, according to Freddie Mac on Thursday. Mortgage rates dropped for the second time in 2024 and are expected to retreat further as inflation moderates, which could help spark a housing rebound.
As most indicators point to interest rate cuts this coming year, housing experts are predicting a busier spring buying season starting in the next couple of months as more supply and demand return to the housing market thanks to the mortgage rate drop.
“So long as core inflation and economic activity continue to moderate, mortgage rates aren’t expected to rise further,” said Orphe Divounguy, senior macroeconomist at Zillow. “If layoffs remain low, and mortgage rates ease, housing market activity should rebound modestly this spring — meaning more listings coming on the market and more sales.”
Read more: Mortgage rates below 7% — is this a good time to buy a house?
Mortgage applications fall
The likelihood of a bustling spring housing market will depend heavily on where mortgage rates head next. Homebuyers have proven again they are rate-sensitive amidst today’s elevated home prices. After last week’s slight rate increase, the volume of mortgage application activity retracted 7.2% on a weekly basis, according to an application survey tracked by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) for the week ending Jan. 26.
“Low existing housing supply is limiting options for prospective buyers and is keeping home price growth elevated, resulting in a one-two punch that continues to constrain home purchase activity,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s deputy chief economist.
Affordability challenges also worsened due to last week’s rate bump. The average loan size for purchase applications increased to $444,100, the largest since May 2022, according to the MBA.
Low application rates and hardship don’t mean homebuyers have disappeared, though. Redfin’s Homebuyer Demand Index — measuring buyers’ requests for home tours and other buying services on Redfin — showed that interest increased 6% over the last seven days in the week ending Jan. 28.
“I believe this year’s market will launch in the spring, once 6% rates are even more entrenched in buyers’ psyches, and more homeowners list their houses,” said Hal Bennett, a Redfin Premier agent.
Wall Street banks and industry experts expect cuts. Wells Fargo said in its 2024 annual outlook that the economy will moderate by mid-2024, prompting the Fed to cut rates by 225 basis points by early 2025. Housing experts at Fannie Mae are predicting mortgage rates will decline below 6% by the end of 2024, leveling off at about 5.8%.
During yesterday’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting, the Fed announced it is keeping its benchmark rate steady in an effort to suppress inflation to 2%. Even so, Fed Chair Jerome Powell expressed optimism that rates have peaked and a cut could come soon. But any drop is not a guarantee.
“Inflation is still too high, ongoing progress in bringing it down is not assured, and the path forward is uncertain,” Powell said during the FOMC conference.
Read more: What the Fed rate decision means for bank accounts, CDs, loans, and credit cards
The latest Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index — the Fed’s preferred inflation measurement — increased 2.6% annually in December, falling below 3% for the first time since March 2021. More importantly, though, is that an annualized PCE using data from the prior three to six months is now below 2%.
“The lower inflation readings over the second half of last year are welcome,” Powell added, “but we will need to see continuing evidence to build confidence that inflation is moving down sustainably toward our goal.”
Rebecca Chen is a reporter for Yahoo Finance and previously worked as an investment tax certified public accountant (CPA).
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Source: finance.yahoo.com
Not all is gloomy in the housing market. Redfin’s Homebuyer Demand Index has been on an upward trend since mid-January. The number of home tours has also seen a 16% increase since the start of the year, outperforming the growth observed last year during the same period. In addition, there’s been a 7% year-over-year increase … [Read more…]
High mortgage rates and harsh weather are pushing down home sales, but some house hunters are touring and getting a feel for the market.
The bumpy start to 2024’s housing market continues, with daily average mortgage rates posting their biggest one-day increase in over a year on February 2. The jump came after a hotter-than-expected January jobs report and the Fed’s confirmation that they’re unlikely to cut interest rates in the next two months, which means mortgage rates will probably remain elevated near their current level for at least that long.
Rising home prices are exacerbating rising rates, with the typical monthly mortgage payment just about $100 shy of October’s all-time high. The median U.S. sale price rose 5.4% year over year during the four weeks ending February 4, the biggest increase in over a year. High housing costs are pricing out many would-be homebuyers; pending sales are down 8%, the biggest decline in four months. There are also a few other contributors to sales falling: Harsh winter weather in the first half of January delayed a lot of homebuying deals, and pending sales were improving at this time last year as mortgage rates temporarily dropped.
Still, some house hunters are at least getting a feel for the market. Redfin’s Homebuyer Demand Index–a seasonally adjusted measure of requests for tours and other buying services from Redfin agents–has steadily risen since mid-January, and a separate measure of home tours shows they’ve increased 16% since the start of the year, compared with a 10% rise at this time last year. Some sellers are jumping in, too, with new listings up 7% year over year.
“We’re seeing a bit of recovery with house hunters touring homes, but even demand at the earliest stages isn’t up as much as we would expect at this time of year,” said Chen Zhao, Redfin’s economic research lead. “That’s because mortgage rates are climbing again and winter weather has been harsher than usual in much of the country, keeping some house hunters at home.”
Luis Rojas, a Redfin Premier agent in the Viera West, FL area, said today’s housing market is touch and go. “High mortgage rates brought the local market to a near-standstill from August through November, activity picked up when rates dropped a bit in mid-December, and now it’s slowing down again as rates rise,” Rojas said. “I’m advising buyers–especially first-timers–that the mortgage rates they see in the news aren’t the be-all and end-all. Some local lenders are willing to give rates in the 5% range for new construction projects because any business is better than no business.”
Indicators of homebuying demand and activity | ||||
Value (if applicable) | Recent change | Year-over-year change | Source | |
Daily average 30-year fixed mortgage rate | 6.92% (Feb. 7) | Up from 6.75% a week earlier | Up from 6.39% | Mortgage News Daily |
Weekly average 30-year fixed mortgage rate | 6.63% (week ending Feb. 1) | Near lowest level since May | Up from 6.09% | Freddie Mac |
Mortgage-purchase applications (seasonally adjusted) | Down 1% from a week earlier; up 3% from a month earlier (as of week ending Feb. 2) | Down 19% | Mortgage Bankers Association | |
Redfin Homebuyer Demand Index (seasonally adjusted) | Up slightly from a week earlier, but down 7% from a month earlier (as of week ending Feb. 4) | Down 14% | Redfin Homebuyer Demand Index, a measure of requests for tours and other homebuying services from Redfin agents | |
Google searches for “home for sale” | Down 2% from a month earlier (as of Feb. 3) | Down 16% | Google Trends | |
Touring activity | Up 16% from the start of the year (as of Feb. 6) | At this time last year, it was up 10% from the start of 2023 | ShowingTime, a home touring technology company |
U.S. highlights: Four weeks ending February 4, 2024
Redfin’s national metrics include data from 400+ U.S. metro areas, and is based on homes listed and/or sold during the period. Weekly housing-market data goes back through 2015. Subject to revision. |
|||
Four weeks ending February 4, 2024 | Year-over-year change | Notes | |
Median sale price | $361,498 | 5.4% | Biggest increase since Oct. 2022 |
Median asking price | $395,949 | 7% | Biggest increase since Sept. 2022 |
Median monthly mortgage payment | $2,607 at a 6.63% mortgage rate | 11.5% | Down roughly $110 from all-time high set in October 2023, but up roughly $250 from the four weeks ending Dec. 31 |
Pending sales | 68,872 | -7.8% | Biggest decline since October 2023 |
New listings | 70,415 | 6.6% | |
Active listings | 740,834 | -3.5% | |
Months of supply | 4.2 months | Unchanged | 4 to 5 months of supply is considered balanced, with a lower number indicating seller’s market conditions. |
Share of homes off market in two weeks | 33.3% | Up from 32% | |
Median days on market | 48 | -2 days | |
Share of homes sold above list price | 22.4% | Up from 20% | |
Share of homes with a price drop | 5.5% | +1 pt. | |
Average sale-to-list price ratio | 98.2% | +0.5 pts. |
Metro-level highlights: Four weeks ending February 4, 2024 Redfin’s metro-level data includes the 50 most populous U.S. metros. Select metros may be excluded from time to time to ensure data accuracy. |
|||
---|---|---|---|
Metros with biggest year-over-year increases | Metros with biggest year-over-year decreases | Notes | |
Median sale price |
Miami (13.4%) Anaheim, CA (13.4%) Detroit (13.3%) Warren, MI (12.1%) Chicago (11.3%) |
San Antonio, TX (-4.7%) Austin, TX (-3.7%) |
Declined in 2 metros |
Pending sales | San Jose, CA (13.8%)
San Francisco, CA (6%) Anaheim, CA (4.5%) Riverside, CA (0.4%) Columbus, OH (0.2%) |
San Antonio, TX (-33.2%)
Portland, OR (-30.2%) Nashville, TN (-21.5%) New Brunswick, TN (-19.4%) Houston (-18.5%) |
Increased in 5 metros |
New listings | Dallas, TX (27.1%)
Miami (26.9%) Jacksonville, FL (26.3%) Fort Lauderdale, FL (23.6%) San Diego, CA (22.1%) |
Chicago (-17.8%)
Atlanta (-16%) Milwaukee, WI (-14%) Portland, OR (-13.6%) Nashville, TN (-10.4%) |
Declined in 14 metros |
Refer to our metrics definition page for explanations of all the metrics used in this report.
Source: redfin.com
Refinancing activity rebounded for the week ending February 2 after declining the previous week, as mortgage rates stabilize in the under-7 percent level, contributing to a rise in home loans application, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said on Wednesday.
The Refinance Index jumped 12 percent from the week before February and also rose by a percent compared to one year ago, according to MBA. Meanwhile, mortgage applications jumped by nearly 4 percent in the same time span.
The average cost of a 30-year fixed rate mortgage for a loan of $766,550 ticked up slightly to 6.80 percent compared to 6.78 the previous week.
“Mortgage rates have stayed close to where they started the year, despite swings in Treasury yields because of slowing inflation offset by stronger than expected readings on the job market,” Joel Kan, MBA’s deputy chief economist, said in a statement shared with Newsweek. “Rates at these levels have not prompted much of a reaction in the refinance market, as most homeowners have mortgages with much lower rates.”
Mortgage rates peaked at about 8 percent in the fall of 2023, making the cost of a home loan the highest it had been since the turn of the century. The elevated rate environment discouraged both buyers and sellers to step into the housing market who were reluctant to incur higher monthly payments of their housing loan.
Part of the reason rates jumped so high was due to the Federal Reserve’s hiking of its funds rate to battle soaring inflation. The rise in prices is cooling giving confidence that policymakers will slash rates but a strong jobs market is creating uncertainty on how quickly those cuts will happen.
But to begin the year, there is evidence that buyers are showing interest in dipping into the housing market, according to real estate platform Redfin, as rates have fallen over the last few weeks.
Redfin’s Homebuyer Demand Index, which tracks requests for tours, went up 6 percent for the week ending January 28, the platform said. Real estate agents say, however, that that increase in interest has yet to translate to a substantial jump in sales.
MBA experts are seeing a similar bubbling up of buyer interest.
“Purchase activity has been strong to start 2024 compared to the final quarter of 2023. However, activity is still weaker than a year ago because of low housing supply,” MBA’s Kan said.
Supply of homes is a huge challenge for the housing market. Housing economists have told Newsweek in the past that the market is 4 million homes short of demand, contributing to a jump in prices.
Some economists suggest that as mortgage rates fall, the used homes market may pick-up as sellers would begin to come out of the sidelines and finally put their homes in the market.
“Once they start moving, and I suspect we’ll see more and more of those folks moving in the coming year, they’ll have to become somewhat aggressive on pricing, they’re going to have to lower their price,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told Newsweek last week.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Source: newsweek.com
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Homebuyer demand for mortgages fell for the second week in a row last week as firming rates put a damper on the surge in mortgage applications seen in January, a weekly survey of lenders by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) shows.
The MBA’s Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey showed applications for purchase loans fell by a seasonally adjusted 1 percent last week when compared to the week before and were down 19 percent from a year ago. Requests to refinance were up 12 percent week over week but only 1 percent from a year ago.
“Mortgage rates have stayed close to where they started the year, despite swings in Treasury yields because of slowing inflation offset by stronger than expected readings on the job market,” MBA Deputy Chief Economist Joel Kan said in a statement.
At 6.68 percent Tuesday, rates on 30-year fixed-rate conforming mortgages were up 12 basis points from a recent low of 6.56 percent registered on Dec. 27, according to loan lock data collected by Optimal Blue.
That’s still a 1.15 percentage point drop from last year’s peak of 7.83 percent, seen on Oct. 25. However, a record number of Americans polled by Fannie Mae in January — many of whom have been priced out of markets where listings remain scarce — said they’re expecting mortgage rates to come down even more in the year ahead.
“Rates at these levels have not prompted much of a reaction in the refinance market, as most homeowners have mortgages with much lower rates,” Kan said. “Purchase activity has been strong to start 2024 compared to the final quarter of 2023. However, activity is still weaker than a year ago because of low housing supply.”
Applications for purchase mortgages picked up during the first three weeks of January after rates pulled back from 2023 highs. But with mortgage rates now slightly higher than they were at the end of the year, the MBA’s surveys show demand for purchase loans contracting during the weeks ending Jan. 26 and Feb. 2.
Bond market investors’ bets that the Federal Reserve would begin cutting rates in March had been helping bring rates down. But at the central bank’s first meeting of the year, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell warned that a March rate cut was unlikely, and Fed policymakers indicated they intend to continue “quantitative tightening” that’s trimmed $1.3 trillion from the Fed’s balance sheet.
A blowout jobs report released Feb. 2 seemed to validate the Fed’s cautious approach to fighting inflation, showing U.S. businesses and government agencies added close to twice as many jobs as expected in January.
(A survey by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) that’s considered to be a leading indicator of future employment trends points to slower job growth in the second quarter of this year, economists at Pantheon Macroeconomics said Tuesday in a note to clients.)
In an interview with the CBS News program 60 Minutes that aired Sunday, Powell reiterated that while almost all 19 members of the Federal Open Market Committee expect to cut rates this year, the first cut isn’t likely to come until the middle of the year.
Inflation “has been falling steadily for 11 months,” 60 Minutes reporter Scott Pelley pointed out to Powell. “You’ve avoided a recession. Why not cut the rates now?”
Powell said that with the economy still on strong footing, “we feel like we can approach the question of when to begin to reduce interest rates carefully.”
The Fed wants to see “more evidence that inflation is moving sustainably down to 2 percent,” Powell said. “We have some confidence in that. Our confidence is rising. We just want some more confidence before we take that very important step of beginning to cut interest rates.”
At 7.29 percent, rates on jumbo mortgages that exceed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s $766,550 conforming loan limit are up 73 basis points from a recent low of 6.56 percent registered by Optimal Blue on Dec. 29.
The growing “spread” between conforming and jumbo mortgage rates coincides with renewed worries that falling commercial real estate values could lead to problems for regional banks that have traditionally been a leading provider of jumbo loans.
Asked by 60 Minutes about the likelihood of real estate sparking a banking crisis on the magnitude of the 2008 financial crisis, Powell said he doesn’t think that’s likely.
“We’ve looked at the larger banks’ balance sheets, and it appears to be a manageable problem,” Powell said. “There are some smaller and regional banks that have concentrated exposures in these areas that are challenged. And, you know, we’re working with them.”
While he doesn’t see a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis, Powell does expect “there will be some banks that have to be closed or merged out of existence because of this. That’ll be smaller banks, I suspect, for the most part.”
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Source: inman.com
It’s no secret that 2023 was a difficult year to buy a home. With mortgage rates briefly topping 8% and home prices breaking records throughout the year, many would-be sellers simply decided not to bother listing their homes, exacerbating already tight inventories.
New data from the U.S. Census Bureau published last week shows how drastically housing inventory has changed since 2020, while weekly data from Altos Research offers some insights on where it goes from here.
Census Bureau data on housing inventory estimates details two cycles this decade – the onset of the pandemic and the rise of interest rates – that have been catastrophic for the nation’s for-sale housing inventory.
The onset of the pandemic and government lockdowns sparked a frenzy for homes, especially those away from crowded downtowns and with ample space for home offices and homeschooling. Prospective homebuyers were armed with low interest rates, paused student loan payments and stimulus checks.
The number of owner-occupied homes skyrocketed, quickly depleting the number of vacant for-sale homes. Renters occupied fewer homes, and fewer vacant homes were reserved for them.
The number of homes “held off market” – second homes, vacation homes and others that are neither for-sale, for-rent or occupied – shrank. This could be because their owners snagged profits amid rapidly rising prices, because those who can afford second homes paused buying, or a combination of the two.
Seasonal housing, too, dropped considerably. This is likely due to the fact that seasonal housing – defined as homes intended for periodic occupancy such as for holiday resort guests or farm workers – could be profitably sold to meet soaring homebuyer demand and was not needed during the pandemic’s travel restrictions and weak travel demand.
Most of the trends begun in 2020 continued in 2021 except for renter-occupied homes, which rose above 2019 levels in the second half of the year. This was likely a reflection of the prolonged decline in vacant homes for sale, which made it difficult for would-be buyers to find a home to purchase.
Many of the same pandemic forces that set off the homebuying frenzy also fueled a frenetic pace of inflation. In 2022, the Federal Reserve began taking action to combat these market forces by raising interest rates, starting the second cycle of inventory changes.
Over two years, the Federal Reserve hiked rates 11 times for a total increase of 5.25 percentage points, the fastest pace of hikes in four decades. It has held rates at an effective rate of 5.33% in every meeting of the Federal Reserve Open Markets Committee since July 2023, including in their meeting last week.
Mortgage rates followed suit, walloping buyers’ purchasing power. The sudden run-up in rates discouraged would-be sellers from listing their homes, as they would be faced with much higher monthly payments for the same size home were they to sell and buy another home – if they even qualified for the same size home as they currently own.
This squeezed inventory even further throughout 2022 and 2023, pushing home prices to record highs month after month.
The high-rate environment further pushed owner occupancy up while pushing homes held off market, seasonal housing and homes vacant for sale down. That the number of owner-occupied homes rose throughout 2023 – an abysmal year for home sales – shows just how tightly recent homebuyers are holding onto their low rates.
High rates, combined with low for-sale inventories and high home prices, have also resulted in a surge in home renters. There were nearly 2 million more renter-occupied homes in the fourth quarter of 2023 than in the same quarter of 2019.
The environment has also prompted many homeowners to list their homes for rent rather than sale. The number of homes vacant for rent in the fourth quarter of 2023 was up 4% since the same quarter five years ago, while the number of homes vacant for sale was down 36%.
The extremes of the 2020s have dealt big blows to for-sale inventories. First the 2020-2021 housing frenzy took a big bite out of existing inventories, then the 2022-2023 streak of rate hikes kept would-be sellers from replenishing those inventories.
The 2020s have also seen for-sale inventory siphoned from second homes, vacation homes and seasonal homes. Homebuilders, too, have added to for-sale inventory, pushing the total number of homes in the U.S. up 8.7% since the fourth quarter of 2018. But none of these valves have alleviated the shortage of for-sale homes or the resultant high home prices.
The majority of homes that would be up for sale are being held by owners with low mortgage rates who would rather stay put or rent than sell, a phenomenon known as the “mortgage rate lockdown.” Plus, boomers are aging in place for longer, further depleting available housing stock. In fact, the number of owner-occupied homes is at an all-time high, while the percentage of homes that are owner-occupied is well above pre-pandemic levels.
The only apparent change that could induce significant for-sale inventory back into the market, then, is lower mortgage rates. How quickly would sellers return if rates were lower? We got an early test in December and January when the FOMC forecasted rate cuts in 2024.
As rates began falling steeply from October through December and hovered around 6.6% in January, new listings increased on a year-to-year basis in 14 of 15 weeks, according to data from Altos Research, which, like HousingWire, is owned by HW Media.
The data is an encouraging sign that owners with homes to sell will be responsive to mortgage rates, suggesting rate cuts this year could bring about a rapid uptick in homes for sale.
Less encouraging, however, is how soon the market might see rate cuts. Mortgage rates rose above 7% this week for the first time in 2024 following a strong jobs report and comments by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell that suggested cuts were less imminent than many bond and equity traders had assumed.
Source: housingwire.com
Mortgage rates ticked up this week as the 10-year Treasury yield made its way back above 4%.
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.66% as of Jan. 11, a slight increase from last week’s 6.62%, according to Freddie Mac‘s Primary Mortgage Market Survey released on Thursday. The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 5.87% this week, down from 5.89% the prior week. HousingWire’s Mortgage Rates Center showed Optimal Blue’s average 30-year fixed rate on conventional loans at 6.66% on Thursday, down from 6.68% recorded at the same time last week.
“Mortgage rates have not moved materially over the last three weeks and remain in the mid-six percent range, which has marginally increased homebuyer demand,” Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist, said in a statement. “Even this slight uptick in demand, combined with inventory that remains tight, continues to cause prices to rise faster than incomes, meaning affordability remains a major headwind for buyers. Potential homebuyers should look closely at existing state and local resources, such as down payment assistance programs, which can considerably help defray closing costs.”
Mortgage rates dipped below 7% before the start of the new year, steadily declining each week of December. Most housing professionals expect mortgage rates to continue trending downwards in 2024. Economists hope that declining rates will spur more sellers to list their homes. However, mortgage rates might not fall as fast as expected, hampering growth in listing activities. With about two-thirds of outstanding mortgages still carrying rates below 4%, home sellers may choose to delay their selling plans, waiting for a better opportunity.
Forecasters expected the Federal Reserve to begin cutting rates in March. However, given December’s strong jobs report and today’s inflation reading, it’s becoming more likely that those rate cuts will come later in the year, Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS, said in a statement.
Source: housingwire.com