Refi Apps Still Near Best Levels Since October, Despite Larger Decline This Week
Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:59:00 GMT
Per the latest release from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), both refinance and purchase indices decreased this week. In terms of the change from the previous week, it was the biggest drop so far this year, but not remotely as big as last week of 2024.  Here is the refi index in terms of week-over-week change: And here is the exact same data, but expressed in terms of the outright index: If we're just focusing on 2025, the chart above doesn't look too bad for refi demand.  But in case anyone needed to be reminded, the farther back one looks into the past, the more sobering the current levels become--even those seen at last year's peak. Purchase activity struggled as well, down 6% weekly, just barely beating the drop seen in the first week of the year in terms of week-over-week change. In outright terms, this brings purchase activity back near the middle of its recent range. The following bullet points offer a few highlights of changes in the % share of total activity for various categories: ● FHA Share increased from 16 to 16.6 ● VA Share decreased from 14.6 to 14.2 ● Refi Share decreased from 40.2 to 38.7

Building Permits Staying Fairly Calm as Housing Starts Whipsaw
Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:30:00 GMT
The Census Bureau released its New Residential Construction report this week, frequently referred to by its principal component "housing starts" (a term for the start of the first phase of new home construction). In addition to housing starts, the data also logs building permits as well as completions.  There's not always a perfectly linear correlation between the various metrics for a variety of reasons. Some permits never turn into construction, for instance.  Sometimes there's a backlog of permits waiting on materials, labor, or weather before construction can begin.  In general, building permits remain more even-keeled while housing starts gyrate.  The past three reports have been a good example of this.  During that time, building permits have barely budged at an annualized pace of 1.49m, 1.48m, and 1.48m in Nov, Dec, and Jan respectively. Meanwhile, housing starts have whipsawed from 1.305m to 1.515m and now back down to 1.366m.   Using "millions" as a unit number makes it easy to overlook the fact that we're talking about a swing in this year's national housing availability of a whopping 149k units.  But even then, such a swing doesn't necessarily look too troubling in the bigger picture. Housing completions suggest an even lower cause for concern of the trajectory of construction. Regionally, the biggest decline in percentage terms was in the Northeast (-27.6%). But in terms of outright units, the South led the decline with a drop of 207k.  Contrast that to the Northeast's unit count only declining by 40k.

Builder Confidence Dropped, But Not Enough to Jump to Conclusions
Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:01:00 GMT
The National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB) along with Wells Fargo released the monthly builder confidence index this week, and it came out much weaker than expected. With tariff and immigration news rapidly evolving, it's tempting to conclude that any major changes in homebuilder sentiment would be directly related.  For instance, if builders think that building materials could be harder to obtain or more expensive, it generally hits the confidence index.  This would be a particularly big problem with something like lumber as the U.S. imports roughly a third of its framing lumber from Canada. While it's easier to agree with this narrative based purely on concepts and words, the actual numbers tell a different story when you see them on a chart.  Builder confidence has been strongly locked into what market watchers would call a "consolidation pattern."  On charts, this takes the shape of converging lines marking recent highs and lows.   Some technical analysts (market watchers who infer significance or movement cues based on chart patterns) believe that momentum will continue in the direction of a breakout--something that inevitably must happen this year as far as this consolidation is concerned.  Just as often, however, a consolidation breakout can give way to broadly sideways momentum until underlying economic fundamentals change in a big way. In the current case, it would be hard to argue that elevated interest rates are anything but the key factor depressing home sales and builder confidence.

Refi Demand at 3 Month High Thanks to Lower Rates
Fri, 14 Feb 2025 19:47:00 GMT
In this week's update on mortgage applications from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), purchases continued a modest retreat but refinance demand improved for the 2nd week in a row. This was just barely enough for the Refi index to hit the highest levels since October 2024. The uptick makes sense in light of the mortgage rate situation last week.  Rates had been inching slowly to the lowest levels in almost 2 months as of Monday morning. Wednesday brought a a noticeable drop and there wasn't much of a bounce for the rest of the week. As has been and continues to be the case, all of the volatility seen in the past year represents only a fraction of the longer-term range. Here's the same refi index over a longer time frame. The purchase side of the market is typically never as responsive to rates in the short term, and last week was no exception. MBA's purchase app index moved down for the 3rd week in a row, although it's still closer to the top of the recent range. In the bigger picture, purchase applications suffer from the same jarring adjustment experienced across the housing market with the epic rate spike in 2022. Here's a breakdown of this week versus last week in several categories of loans in terms of market share: Refinances 40.2 vs 39.0 FHA Loans 16.0 vs 16.2 VA Loans 14.6 vs 13.3 Survey respondents had 30yr fixed rates at 6.95 with 0.64 points, down slightly from 6.97 in the previous week.  Jumbo loans were down to 6.96 from 7.01 and ARM rates moved up to 6.20 from 6.07.

Refinance Applications Tick Back Up as Rates Play Ball
Wed, 05 Feb 2025 20:35:00 GMT
There are two main styles of measurement when it comes to keeping track of mortgage rates: daily and weekly.  Sometimes, the differences in methodologies mean that two reputable sources can convey seemingly incongruent conclusions.  Other times, both the granular and general data agree.  This is one of those times. Whether we're looking at MND's daily averages or MBA's weekly survey, mortgage rates hit their lowest levels in 6 weeks by the end of last week.  The drop wasn't immense, but based on today's release of MBA application data, it was enough for a small bump in refinance demand.  As is constantly the case over the past several months, the scope of the mid-2024 spike in application activity is more easily understood with the benefit of additional historical context. Purchase applications are never as sensitive to rates over short time horizons.  In fact, they moved down a bit last week, but the counterpoint is that the purchase index has been holding near recent highs. Here too, broader context changes the takeaway. Other details from the report: Refinances accounted for 39% of the total vs 37.1% last time FHA loans accounted for 16.2%, down a bit from 16.7% VA loans accounted for 13.3% vs 13.2% MBA recorded 30yr fixed rates at 6.97 for the week with 0.64 discount points Jumbo rates were 7.01 with 0.48 discount points

Pending Home Sales Pull Back From Best Levels Since April 2023
Thu, 30 Jan 2025 20:24:00 GMT
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) released its Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI) for December this morning.  Pending sales measures the number signed purchase contracts for existing homes. As such, the index is a good early indicator for Existing Home Sales in the coming month. Pending sales dropped 5.5% from last month, which was the highest level for the index since April 2023. Sales had also been on a 4 month winning streak.  In other words, sales activity remains in solid territory, in the upper middle portion of the range over the past year.  As is the case with most housing-related metrics, that range is at historically low levels.  Regional breakdown of monthly and (year-over-year changes): Northeast  -8.1% (-1.3%) Midwest -4.9% (-6.9%) South -2.7% (-5.1%) West -10.3% (-5.1%)

Home Price Appreciation Ran Just Above Expectations in November
Tue, 28 Jan 2025 20:22:00 GMT
Both S&P Case-Shiller and the FHFA released national home price indices this morning. In both cases, November's prices were slightly higher than expected.  For the Case Shiller data, this meant that prices declined less than expected. Unlike FHFA prices, Case Shiller is NOT seasonally adjusted--something that is immediately apparent when viewing a month-to-month chart. November is frequently near the low point of any given year for price appreciation. This month's 0.1% decline is an improvement from October's 0.2% decline or the 0.3% drop from last November. Regionally, Boston and New York were top performers in November, but only NY and Chicago were over 6% year over year. As seen in the table above and the chart below, prices are easily in positive territory in year-over-year terms.  The same is true for FHFA, which is seeing almost the exact same change as Case Shiller.  In addition, both indices have been fairly flat in the low 4% range recently.

Existing Home Sales Inch Up to Highest Levels Since February
Fri, 24 Jan 2025 20:16:00 GMT
It's no mystery that 2024 hasn't been a stellar year for home sales and many other housing metrics. Today's release of December's Existing Home Sales from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) confirmed that.   Bad news first: with December in the books, 2024 goes down as the worst year for existing sales since 1995, just barely edging out 2008.3 The good news is that 2024 is over and we ended the year on the upswing in terms of month-to-month and year-over-year momentum. In addition to 3 straight months of improvement and the best sales pace since February, December's annual pace of 4.24m is 9.3% higher than last December and the largest annual increase since June 2021 (to be clear, the 12 months in 2024 added up to the lowest level of any year since 1995, but this month's pace was the best since mid 2021 when compared to the same month from the previous year). “Home sales in the final months of the year showed solid recovery despite elevated mortgage rates,” said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. “Home sales during the winter are typically softer than the spring and summer, but momentum is rising with sales climbing year-over-year for three straight months. Consumers clearly understand the long-term benefits of homeownership. Job and wage gains, along with increased inventory, are positively impacting the market.” full release...

Highest Purchase Applications in a Year? Technically, Yes
Fri, 24 Jan 2025 19:52:00 GMT
The Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA) weekly mortgage application survey showed a modest decrease in refinance applications and an even more modest increase in purchase applications. At these levels of movement, it's just as fair to say that applications generally held steady. That's a good thing for purchases considering last week was already at the highest levels in nearly a year, but again, there's no real change from the previous week. The more we zoom out, the more sobering the context becomes. The counterpoint is that this context is also optimistic because short of a major meltdown in the housing/mortgage market, there's really nowhere to go but up. Refinance demand will always be more closely tied to interest rates.  As such, it's no surprise to see low levels persist as rates remain elevated compared to the lows seen several months ago. On a positive note, present levels are still about 30% higher than the late 2023 lows.  The big picture view of refi apps reminds us of a different time, when each new long-term low in rates meant that most mortgage holders could benefit from a refi.   Other highlights from this week's data: Refis accounted for 40.4% of the total, down from 42.7 last time Adjustable rate mortgages accounted for 5.5% of the total FHA loan were 16.5% of the total, down from 16.9% VA loans were 14.6% of the total, down from 15.7%

Homebuilder Confidence Consolidation Continues
Fri, 17 Jan 2025 20:40:00 GMT
While it would be technically accurate to point out a slight increase in January's homebuilder confidence (officially the National Association of Homebuilders Housing Market Index or HMI ), the type of movement we've seen in the past 2 years is better characterized as "incidental" in the bigger picture. As with most housing-related metrics, HMI plummeted in 2022 as interest rates skyrocketed.  It's been broadly sideways ever since with the swings between highs and lows getting smaller and smaller. In market jargon, this is a textbook example of "consolidation"--something that can signal an eventual reversal back toward higher levels or a renewed slide to lower lows.  Absent another catastrophic episode like the Great Financial Crisis, it's not clear what would make builders feel incrementally more gloomy than the post-pandemic lows.  As such, this consolidation is widely viewed as representing some sort of lower boundary.  Time is the key variable, and one that's likely to be determined by economic factors such as interest rates and inflation. Other highlights from this month's NAHB data: 30% of builders lowered prices in January, which is in line with the average of the past 6 months Average price reduction: 5%, unchanged from last month Sales incentives were used in 61% of transactions, also in line with norms