Confounded Interest – Anthony B. Sanders
Financial Markets And Real Estate
For your viewing pleasure.
Looks an awful lot like 2005 before the housing price crash, financial crisis and Great Recession. US home prices, HOUSING inflation, is growing at 16.61% YoY, GDP Price index QoQ (annualized) is growing at 6.10%, and average hourly earnings is growing at 4.20% YoY.
Let’s see what happens in Jackson Hole this weekend!
Mortgage applications increased 1.6 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending August 20, 2021.
The Refinance Index increased 1 percent from the previous week and was 3 percent higher than the same week one year ago. You can clearly see the Refi Wave associated with the Covid outbreak and sudden Fed monetary stimulus resulting in a lowering of 30-year mortgage rates.
The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 3 percent from one week earlier. Notice the general slowdown in purchase applications with soaring home prices.
The unadjusted Purchase Index increased 1 percent compared with the previous week and was 16 percent lower than the same week one year ago.
Rolling, rolling, rolling, keep those mortgages moving.
The good news! US new home sales rose 1% in July to 708k units SAAR.
The bad news? The median price of new home sales is $390k.
More bad news for the midwest and northeast. New home sales dropped. Most of the growth in new home sales occurred in The West.
Hot, hot, hot! But not in the northeast and midwest. There it is not, not, not.
Feeling hot, hot, hot. Housing, that is!
US existing home sales in July rose to 5.99 million SAAR, beating expectations. But the inventory of home available for sale remains low by historic standards.
The median price of existing homes declined to 17.8% YoY with The Federal Reserve pumping money into the system like there is no tomorrow.
Bloomberg had the following headline: “Sales of Existing Homes in U.S. Rise as Inventory Picks Up.” While that is a true statement, existing home sales inventory is still down 12% YoY.
I wonder if the attendees at the Jackson Hole Fed conference will be discussing the gut-wrenching home price growth? Rumor has it that Fed Chair Powell will use J-Hole as a platform to suggest paring back on the monetary stimulus.
The NAHB Homebuilder confidence index dropped to a 13 month low as building materials rise by 19.4% YoY.
Of course, then we have the University of Michigan conditions for buying a home crashing as well.
Rising home prices and rising construction material costs? Yikes.
Of course, the NAHB had this to say:
“Our expectation is that production bottlenecks should ease over the coming months and the market should return to more normal conditions,” NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz said in a statement.
Perhaps, but The Fed needs to slow down its money printing as well.
The most powerful economists in the world?
The ball is in the court of The Fed, the Biden administration (HUD) and Congress. Will they take action?
There will be more housing inventory hitting the market soon. As home prices are up and most are no longer in negative equity situations, some will decide to sell into this hot market. Obviously not paying your mortgage for 12, 14, 16, or even 18 months is a nice bonus that party is coming to an end.
Zillow’s research found that most are not going to bring their mortgage current. Assume someone took a forbearance and their monthly mortgage cost was $2,000 per month, some may be behind by up to $36,000 when the forbearance period ends. Okay, well what if you can’t make it current? You can defer the payments to the end of the mortgage but you still owe that and many got used to not even paying the regular monthly payment. So a sizable portion will be selling
Here is Black Knight’s Scheduled Forebearance Plan expirations.
Could this be the end of the 16.6% YoY growth rate in home prices? Or will Congress and/or The Biden Administration extend the forbearance? Or will The Fed expand their balance sheet even further??
Will the Biden Administration come to the rescue?
Confounded Interest - Anthony B. Sanders 
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