Not much new commentary is needed with the new home sales data from the Census Bureau since analysis of the NAR home sale data last week also applies in full part here. It does bear repeating, however, that the turn in housing is obvious and coincides with the dawn of 2013. No doubt the rapid appreciation in prices played a [...]
I quoted Janet Yellen’s statement from her first press conference yesterday, but it bears repeating: These sizable and still increasing holdings will continue to put downward pressure on longer‐term interest rates, support mortgage markets, and make financial conditions more accommodative, helping to support job creation and a return of inflation to the committee's objective. We saw new home construction data [...]
The housing construction data was delayed purportedly by the government shutdown in October. The expectation was that the September data would be released concurrent with the October data; which itself would be delayed by a few weeks. Given the state of housing uncertainty driven by financial parameters and recent trajectories, these are relatively important statistical updates. Rather than get the [...]
Despite a slight rebound in mortgage refi applications from the absolute low (for now) in the middle of September, the decline in purchase applications actually appears to be steadily eroding mortgage finance. We already know about bank concerns over declining volumes, and the potential liquidity issues from QE, left unanswered to this point is the consumer effect. While this monetary [...]
I think that the initial impulse driving FOMC concerns over “too much” monetary stimulus tied closely to three factors: repo markets, junk bonds and housing. Home prices in previous bubble markets have been on fire again, and in no way do those prices reflect actual supply and demand factors (they very much ignore basics like demographic trends). Prices reflected and [...]
House price data from S&P Case Shiller for May 2013 was about what we have come to expect. There were sharp year-over-year increases in the usual bubbly markets, prompting Robert Shiller to note, “the cities that have bubbled in the past are bubbling again.” As with much of 2013, the “top” seven cities were all up over 15% Y/Y, with [...]
Real estate markets continued the blistering pace of new home sales in June, according to Census Bureau estimates. Year-over-year, seasonally adjusted growth was 38.1% to an annual rate of 497,000; the highest level since May 2008. On an unadjusted basis, there were 48,000 new homes sold in the US in June, up 41% Y/Y. In the wider historical context, the [...]
For Bernanke and QE 3 (the MBS strand) there was only good news in Q1 ’13 GDP. Residential housing “investment”, i.e., housing-related construction, was revised upward to a 14% growth rate from 12.1%. That meant the frothy real estate “markets” provided 0.34% of the 1.8% growth rate in Q1 GDP. Unfortunately, that was less than the 0.41% provided in Q4, [...]
The talk of tapering QE has been incessant the past few weeks, no doubt playing a huge role in the volatility of the US Treasury market (as if there is some competition with the JGB market). Yesterday’s dramatic selloff has been absurdly linked to consumer confidence numbers and “improving” economic fundamentals, as if bond rates suddenly care about improving consumer [...]
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