Morning Report: Existing home sales rise

Posted on August 23, 2021 by Brent Nyitray

Vital Statistics:

  Last Change
S&P futures 4,456 26.2
Oil (WTI) 64.73 2.55
10 year government bond yield   1.26%
30 year fixed rate mortgage   3.05%

Stocks are higher this morning on overseas strength. Bonds and MBS are flat.

 

We have a pretty heavy week of data coming up, with new home sales, GDP, and personal incomes / outlays. The annual Fed Jackson Hole conference is this week as well. Jerome Powell speaks on Friday.

 

The Chicago Fed National Activity Index showed the economy expanding well above historical trends in July. The CFNAI is a sort of meta-index of a bunch of disparate economic indicators.

 

Private label securitizations hit $42 billion in the second quarter, which was about the highest number since the 2008 financial crisis. This was driven by Fannie and Freddie’s limits on investment properties and second homes. Non-QM was a part of this as well, but the growth is coming from NOO properties that F&F won’t insure. This was the whole point of Mick Mulvaney’s caps on F&F, and it looks like it worked.

 

Existing home sales rose 2% in July to a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 6 million properties, according to NAR. “We see inventory beginning to tick up, which will lessen the intensity of multiple offers,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. “Much of the home sales growth is still occurring in the upper-end markets, while the mid- to lower-tier areas aren’t seeing as much growth because there are still too few starter homes available.”

Inventory increased 7.3% to 1.7 million properties, which represents a 2.6 month supply. The median home price rose 18% to 359k. “Although we shouldn’t expect to see home prices drop in the coming months, there is a chance that they will level off as inventory continues to gradually improve,” said Yun.

The first time homebuyer accounted for 30% of all sales, and 23% of transactions were all-cash sales.

Filed under: Economy, Morning Report |

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15 Responses

  1. jnc4p, on August 23, 2021 at 1:50 pm said:

    The Democrats approach to hearings about Biden’s Afghanistan debacle is the exact opposite of their approach to the January 6 riots (no surprise).

    When it comes to Biden, it’s about examining the full context and having a broad investigation of all the factors, rather than just focusing on the mismanaged withdrawal.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/23/chris-murphy-afghanistan-hearings-biden/

    Like

    Reply
  2. jnc4p, on August 23, 2021 at 2:03 pm said:

    Assuming this isn’t fake you do have to hand it to the Taliban for learning how to play the social media trolling game:

    Like

    Reply
  3. jnc4p, on August 23, 2021 at 2:20 pm said:

    I think that banning localities from having mask mandates and cruise ships from mandating vaccinations is a mistake, but DeSantis sure knows how to pick the right enemies:

    https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2021/08/19/another-desantis-scandal-implodes-n2594328

    Like

    Reply
  4. ScottC, on August 24, 2021 at 8:01 am said:

    This is just too perfect:

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/landmark-study-about-honesty-and-cheating-relied-on-faked-data/ar-AANzNQB

    A landmark study on how to curb cheating has been retracted after nearly a decade and the prominent professor whose team produced the paper is himself accused of cheating and relying on faked data.

    Dan Ariely, a professor of psychology and behavioral economist at Duke University, rose to prominence with his 2012 study that found people would be less likely to cheat and lie if they signed an honesty declaration at the top of a form before answering questions.

    The study was used as a springboard by government agencies around the world, including the IRS, who chose to include an honesty declaration at the top of their forms and credited the method with helping to collect an additional $1.6 million from government vendors in the summer of 2015.

    Governments in Canada and other nations also spent thousands of dollars working with researchers to change their own tax forms to fit the model, but to no avail, Scientific American reported.

    The 2012 study was eventually retracted by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences after academics on the Data Colada research blog tried recreating the experiments in the study, only to find that there was no reduction in cheating and lying and that the main experiment was faked ‘beyond any shadow of a doubt.’

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

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