All Things in Moderation

Vital Statistics:

Stocks are higher this morning on no real news. Bonds and MBS are flat.

The second round of stimulus passed the House yesterday and is scheduled to be signed by the President at noon today.

Durable goods orders fell 14% in March, driven by lower transportation orders. Ex-transports, they were down 0.2%. Core Capital Goods (a proxy for capital expenditures) rose 0.1%.

New Home Sales fell to 627k in March from an annualized pace of 741k in February.

Homebuilder Pulte reported good earnings yesterday, however this was mainly before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.  “The U.S. housing industry carried tremendous momentum into 2020, until the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic began impacting the country,” said Ryan Marshall, PulteGroup President and CEO. “As the coronavirus spread and state and local governments implemented various restrictions and stay-in-place orders, we experienced a material slowdown in consumer traffic and sales activity beginning in mid-March.” Despite the COVID issues, closings and orders were up 16% and gross margins increased. Before COVID, 2020 was expected to be the year when homebuilding finally broke out of the post-bubble vortex. It looks like it will have to wait another year. As an aside, Redfin reported that 1 in 7 offers were signed by buyers who saw the home virtually.

About 3.4 million homeowners have requested mortgage forbearance, according to Black Knight Financial Services. This is 6.4% of all mortgages. With 26 million new unemployment claims since the shelter-in-place orders, that number is probably going up. At this level, servicers in aggregate are on the hook to advance $2.8 billion per month for Ginnie securities. So far, Treasury is refusing to create an advance facility for non-bank servicers.

Some states are relaxing shelter-in-place restrictions and allowing non-essential businesses to re-open. Needless to say, public health types are aghast, however it will be interesting to see how well it works, especially Texas. Speaking of Texas, the amount of newly unemployed in the US, about 26 million, is just shy of the population of the US’s second most populous state at 29 million. That puts the economic carnage of this shelter-in-place order in perspective. Even New York is beginning to look at relaxing restrictions, at least upstate.

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