Simply Unaffordable! Portugal, Canada And USA Are Least Affordable, Hawaii And California Are The Least Affordable US States

Housing is simply unaffordable in many parts of the USA and world. Its the same all over the world. except Romania and Finland.

The most unaffordble countries are Portugal, Canada, the USA, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic. The most affordable? Romania, Finland, Italy, and Bulgaria.

For the USA, Hawaii and California are the least affordable while West Virginia and Iowa are the most affordable.

Consumer Confidence In Housing Remains Grim At 30 (100 Is Breaking Point)

The US got hit with 2 deadly viruses in 2020. First, Covid-19 struck then another deadly virus struck in late 2020 with the election of DEI-obsessed Joe Biden, the worst President in history.

With rising interest rates and housing prices under “Clueless Joe,” buying conditions for housing plunged from around 160 under Trump to an abysmal 30 under Biden. And now Trump.

Keep On Printin’! US Home Prices Accelerated To New Record High In December As Fed Kept On Printing Money (But 14 Of Top 20 Metro Areas Fell In Price From November To December 2024)

To keep house prices soaring to new highs, The Fed need to keep on printing!

For the second straight month, US home prices accelerated YoY in December (according to the latest data from S&P Global’s Case-Shiller Index). The 20-City Composite saw prices jump 0.5% MoM (faster than expected and the biggest jump since June) and accelerating MoM for the 3rd straight month.

Only Tampa FLA of the top 20 metro areas had a negative YoY price change, but 14 of the top 20 metro areas experienced price declines from November to December: Atlanta, Charlotte, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Tampa and Washington DC.

Keep on printin’!

Doesn’t the lead singer for The Gentrys sorty of look like Matt Damon??

Pushed Too Hard By The Fed? Existing Home Sales Drop -4.9% From December As Mortgage Rates Remain Near 7% (Mortgage Rates UP 164% Under Biden!)

Did Jerome Powell and The Federal Reserve push markets too hard?

Sales of existing single-family houses, townhouses, condos, and co-ops that closed in January dropped by 4.9% from December, seasonally adjusted, to an annual rate of 4.08 million sales, according to the National Association of Realtors today.

This rate of sales was up just 2.0% from the abysmally low levels a year ago – 2024 as a whole had been the worst sales year since 1995 – and flat with the abysmally low levels two years ago.

Compared to January 2021, the sales rate was down by 36%, compared to January 2019, the sales rate was down by 25%

On a NON seasonally adjusted basis, things look even more grim.

Active inventory is up 27.6% YoY. As mortgage rates are projected to rise, things can get worse.

Mortgage rates continue to hover around 7%. Mortgage rates rose 164% under Biden!

Maybe if Fed Chair Jerome Powell is forced to wear Sky Saxon of The Seed’s wizard outfit, he will improve his policies.

House Latitudes? Mortgage Applications Down -6.6% Since Last Week, Housing Starts Down -9.8% Since December (Riders On The Storm)

I call this the house latitudes. Horse latitudes is a belt of calm air and sea occurring in both the northern and southern hemispheres between the trade winds and the westerlies. And when the ships motion stalled, the crews would jetison their cargo of horses to the delight of sharks! So, we are in state of HOUSE latitudes where the wind pushing mortgage refis and purchase apps. So we are all riders on the storm.

Mortgage applications decreased 6.6 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending February 14, 2025.

The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 6.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased 4 percent compared with the previous week. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 6 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 1 percent compared with the previous week and was 7 percent higher than the same week one year ago.

The Refinance Index decreased 7 percent from the previous week and was 39 percent higher than the same week one year ago.

Privately-owned housing starts in January were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,366,000. This is 9.8 percent below the revised December estimate of 1,515,000 and is 0.7 percent below the January 2024 rate of 1,376,000. Single-family housing starts in January were at a rate of 993,000; this is 8.4 percent below the revised December figure of 1,084,000. The January rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 355,000.

Economists are strange.

The Urgent Need For D.O.G.E.! $4.7 Trillion In Virtually Untraceable Treasury Payments

Janet Yelllen, the former Federal Reserve Chair and Treasury Secretary under clueless Joe Biden was a disaster in every respect. As Fed Chair, she was noteworthy for her clinging to low rates for too long. And as Treasury Secretary, she is noteworthy for her gross fiscal mismanagement (look at the deficit and debt crisis!). Now Zero Hedge has this disastrous report of $4.7 TRILLION in virtuallly untraceable Treasury payments.

The Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on Monday revealed its finding that $4.7 trillion in disbursements by the US Treasury are “almost impossible” to trace, thanks to a rampant disregard for the basic accounting practice of using of tracking codes when dishing out money.

With a debt load of $36.5 trillion and D.O.G.E. clock at $109 million and growing. Not to mention the $227 trillion in unfunded liabilities.

Mind you, it’s not as if such a federal tracking system wasn’t already in place — it simply went casually unused for all sorts of payouts adding up to an almost unfathomable $4.7 trillion. Without Treasury Access Symbol (TAS) identification codes associated with those payouts, there’s little hope in figuring out where all that money went.

“In the Federal Government, the TAS field was optional for ~$4.7 Trillion in payments and was often left blank, making traceability almost impossible,” DOGE announced via its X account. Thanks to DOGE, those “optional” days are over. “As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going,” DOGE added.

Musk celebrated the move. “Major improvement in Treasury payment integrity going live!” he tweeted. “This was a combined effort of DOGE, USTreasury and FederalReserve. Nice work by all.”

DOGE’s scrutiny of various government agencies is eliciting high-pitched shrieks from nearly every leftist in America, from establishment politicians who don’t want the curtain that hides their hijinks and grifting torn down, to your liberal sister-in-law who thinks the government has an endless supply of money and that it spends it all virtuously.

Earlier this month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pushed back on portrayals of DOGE employees as reckless rogues. “These are highly trained professionals,” he told Bloomberg. “This is not some roving band going around doing things. This is methodical and it is going to yield big savings.”

In the wake of the latest revelation that makes normal people glad that DOGE teams are scouring the federal government, Democrats desperately tried to find a way to make it sound bad that DOGE exposed trillions in untraceable payouts and promptly instituted tighter accounting discipline.

Meanwhile, leftists have also been foaming at the mouth over news that DOGE staffers are looking into the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) books, as if they were going to start rerouting funds to Tesla. Considering Social Security is careening toward mandatory benefit cuts as soon as 2033, everyone should welcome a team of financial professionals making sure the system isn’t being drained by improper payments.

Of course, that appears to be exactly what’s been happening. On Sunday night, Musk said DOGE might be on the trail of “the biggest fraud in history,” as SSA data appears to show that 20.789 million Americans over the age of 100 are collecting Social Security retirement benefits. That includes 12 million who are purportedly over 120 years old.

Bent on derailing DOGE, Democrats have sued to prevent the organization from accessing federal data associated with the Office of Personnel Management, and the Health and Human Services, Education, Energy, Transportation, Labor and Commerce departments. On Monday, the federal judge handling the request for a restraining order expressed skepticism over Democrats’ challenge, noting that their “evidence” was largely media speculation about potential harms springing from DOGE’s activities: “The courts can’t act based on media reports. We can’t do that.“

A ruling is expected Tuesday. Here’s looking forward to DOGE proceeding to uncover a relentless string of scandals for months and months to come.

How Low Can Mortgage Rates Go? Mortgage Rates Decline To Just Under 7% As Yield Curve Falls

How low can mortgage rates go?‘

According to National Mortgage News, the 30-Year Fixed mortgage rates dropped to 6.930%, a decline of 0.063%.

The conforming 30-year fixed mortgage rate is hovering just below 7%.

Note that on the left=hand side of the above chart that the US Treasury yield curve slope (green dashed line) hit its local high as Joe Biden became President, then began to decline as the insane spending ensued. Mortgage rates started to rise in 2022 as the yield curve slope declined.

But will the yield curve continue to fall along with mortgage rates? I hope not, because it would require to Biden’s insane spending.

Speakig of killers, DNA tests revealed that Aaron Kosminski, a Polishbarber was the murderer known as Jack The Ripper. Although Janet Yellen was my leading suspect.

January Inflation Comes In Hot, Hot, Hot! CPI Increases To 3% YoY As Federal Spending Continues

Inflation Picks Up Speed, Rising to 3% in January. It’s hot, hot, hot!

Trump and DOGE haven’t been able to curtail Federal spending … yet.

There IS NO Constitutional Crisis with DOGE. The President is fully within his rights to manage the Executive Branch and its agencies. Democrats just don’t like their piggie bank (aka. USAID) being audited.

Example: Federal employee retirements are processed using paper, by hand, in an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania. 700+ mine workers operate 230 feet underground to process ~10,000 applications per month, which are stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes. The retirement process takes multiple months. Great if this was the 1950s!

Is The Mortgage Market Back?Mortgage Refinance Applications Increased in Weekly Survey (+10 Percent) While Purchase Applications Increased (+4 Percent)

The mortgage market is back in town!

Mortgage applications increased 2.3 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending February 7, 2025.

The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, increased 2.3 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index increased 6 percent compared with the previous week. The unadjusted Purchase Index increased 4 percent compared with the previous week and was 2 percent higher than the same week one year ago. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 2 percent from one week earlier.

The Refinance Index increased 10 percent from the previous week and was 33 percent higher than the same week one year ago.

Prepays are down significantly since 2021 which marks the beginning of The Fed starting to raise rates.

Aggregate prepayments for agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) fell 12% in January, with housing seasonals declining and mortgage rates lingering near 7%. MBS turnover speeds have bounced back considerably relative to 2023 lows, though high rates may be starting to take a toll. Even at current elevated rates, GNMA streamline refinancings are picking up as loans issued in spring of 2024 pass out of the refi lockout period.

Bummer! January Jobs Growth Below Estimates Amid Massive Revisions, Job Gains At +143k (New Sheriff In Town!)

Biden is out and so are the crazy job preferences of his administration (e.g., green energy). There is a new sheriff in town (Donald Trump).

Here’s what the BLS reported in Trump’s first official jobs report since he returned to the White House: total payrolls printed at 143K.

down sharply from an upward revised 307K (256K originally) and missing estimates of 175K.

Looking further back, the change in total nonfarm payroll employment for November was revised up by 49,000, from +212,000 to +261,000, and when adding the +51,000 revision to December employment in November and December combined is 100,000 higher than previously reported

But while the sequential change in the Establishment survey was notable, what was far more remarkable was the Household survey where we saw massive population related revisions (discussed last night), which pushed the civilian labor force higher by 2.2 million to 170.744 million, while the number of employed workers also increased by over 2.2 million to 163.895 million. As a result, the Household survey has finally caught up to Establishment survey.