Housing Market Tracker: Mortgage rates spike as inventory falls
Last week mortgage rates rose as purchase applications and inventory fell, with a noticeable move lower in new listing data.
Last week mortgage rates rose as purchase applications and inventory fell, with a noticeable move lower in new listing data.
An index of U.S. leading economic indicators fell in January for a 10th straight month, reflecting declines in consumer expectations and factory orders that underscore risks of a recession. The Conference Board’s measure of the economic outlook for the next three to six months decreased 0.3% in January following a 0.8% decline a month earlier, … [Read more…]
Debt ceiling reached: Will mortgage rates increase again? SFGATE
History says 6%-plus mortgage rates are still too low OCRegister
Mortgage balances drove the uptick in household debt during the fourth quarter of 2022, with an increase of $254 billion compared to Q3.
Current Mortgage Interest Rates on Feb. 14, 2023: Rates Climb CNET
Retail lender Movement Mortgage announced the appointment of Lyra Waggoner as its chief information officer to grow its platform.
The latest Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) survey showed that mortgage loan application volume declined 7.7% for the week ending Feb. 10 from the previous week.
The Fed generally wants annual inflation to be around 2% at the core level. “Core” is fancy market jargon for an economic metric that excludes some of its more volatile components. In the case of inflation data, “core” excludes food and energy prices. Today’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) came in a monthly core level of 0.4%. Granted, neither the Fed nor the financial market expects 0.4% to persist month in and month out, but some basic math tells us that a year’s worth of such inflation would result in a core reading of 4.8%. The Fed expects inflation to fall more in line with 3.5% by the end of this year before getting back into the 2% range next year. That’s the point at which they see themselves going easier on rates. But until that victory is much more clearly in sight, they will continue to raise overnight lending rates periodically and those rate hikes will continue exerting some upward pressure on longer-term rates like mortgages. If there’s a silver lining to Fed’s game plan it’s that financial markets can adjust mortgage rates immediately based on future expectations. In other words, all of the future rate hikes foreseen by traders were already priced in to yesterday’s mortgage rates. The problem is that markets now see more rate hikes after today’s CPI data. Or more specifically, they see the Fed holding on to the ceiling rate for longer than they did yesterday. All told, between the jobs report 2 weeks ago and today’s CPI, the market now sees the Fed keeping the Fed Funds Rate slightly over 5% through December 2023. Before these two pieces of data, December’s Fed meeting was expected to result in a rate closer to 4.5%.