Existing home sales rose in November to an annual rate of 3,820,000 units from 3,790,000 in October. This is 7% lower than November 2022, but the negative growth in sales is improving. If the National Association of Realtor's expectations for 4,710,000 sales in 2024 is correct, this series will show positive growth which could be north of 20%. Inflation in [...]
It’s all somewhat confusing, once acclimated to this new paradigm. The highest in years can still be nearer the lowest in history. Given that apparent contradiction, it seems as if only one of those perspectives can apply. Which one you focus on often depends upon which way you already lean. Toward the end of last year, mortgage interest rates had [...]
While things go wrong for Jay Powell in repo, they are going right in housing. Sort of. It’s more than cliché that the real estate sector is interest rate sensitive. It surely is, and much of the Fed’s monetary policy figuratively banks on it. When policymakers talk about interest rate stimulus, they largely mean the mortgage space. Homebuilders, at least, [...]
It’s only a confusing when you just accept the booming economy of the unemployment rate. From this perspective, 2018 was, and more so 2019 is, a downright conundrum. By all mainstream accounts, this just shouldn’t be happening. Home sales are running at a pace similar to 2015 levels – even with exceptionally low mortgage rates, a record number of jobs [...]
We all know the shorthand. The Federal Reserve influences if not controls economic activity by raising and lowering the federal funds apparatus. Reducing the monetary policy targets is stimulus because everyone loves lower interest costs. Raising them therefore has the opposite effect. More direct and visible consequences are supposed to be observed first in the interest rate sensitive sectors of [...]
For years, realtors have been waiting for more housing inventory. It had become an article of faith, what was restraining a full-blown recovery was the lack of units available. The level of resales like construction was up, but still way, way less than it was now fourteen years past the prior peak despite sufficient population growth to have absorbed the [...]
We can add realtors to the list of those who are angry with Jay Powell. The housing market continued its perplexing slump in October, according to a broad section of data encompassing everything from construction to sales of existing homes. We have been told since Economics 101 that the central bank is, well, central, therefore it is easy to infer [...]
If it wasn’t before, it is definitely a slump now. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) said today that the sales of existing homes across the US in September 2018 fell more than 3% seasonally-adjusted from August. At just 5.15 million (SAAR), that’s the lowest volume in almost three years. Hurricane Harvey had managed to disrupt a good chunk of [...]
July 2018 was another disappointing month in the housing market. Sales of existing homes, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), declined again last month. At a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 5.34 million, it was the lowest level of resales in two years. Apart from the distortions last year in the aftermath of the big Gulf Coast storms, the [...]
One way to read the inversion in eurodollar futures is that the market expects the Federal Reserve to ignore growing economic and financial concerns. There is a very reasonable basis for this structure given recent history. Central bankers and Economists have shown a remarkable, and remarkably consistent, ability to talk themselves out of any negative indications. This is the idea [...]
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