In last Thursday’s Existing Home Sales press release, the NAR’s chief economist said “we’re witnessing a housing recession in terms of declining home sales and home building.”  Less than a week later, today’s Pending Home Sales release contains quite a different remark: “in terms of the current housing cycle, we may be at or close […]

Homes are still selling in record time, but affordability and low inventories are driving sales lower. The National Association of Realtor® (NAR) says previously owned single-family homes, condominiums, townhouses, and cooperative apartment sold at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.81 million units, a 5.9 percent decline from 5.12 million in June. It was the […]

It will be a few weeks before we get the next installment of the bellwether home price indices (Case Shiller and FHFA), but today’s Mortgage Monitor from Black Knight has an earlier look at June’s results.   Much like FHFA and Case Shiller, Black Knight’s data for May had shown year-over-year appreciation that still looked reluctant […]

The big monthly jobs report from the Labor Department (officially “The Employment Situation) is one of the most reliable sources of volatility for interest rates.  While this was much easier to observe before the pandemic, key economic reports have been getting more and more attention as the market looks for evidence that inflation and tighter Fed […]

Mortgage application activity rose last week, reversing a series of declines that started in late June. The increase was modest; the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said its Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, ticked up 1.2 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis, but both purchasing and refinancing volumes moved higher. On […]