Bonds have had a wild ride this year and these last 7 days have been more of the same. Bonds were down big Friday and Tuesday (market was closed Monday for MLK Jr. Day) but rallied the last couple days. The rally seems to be losing steam as bonds are flat , pausing as they look for their next direction. All in all rates closed the last week .125% higher relative to last week, pretty much across the board. It was a quieter week but we did receive some interesting housing data. Let’s take a quick look!
Last year at this time I recall thinking that I had never seen a market as desperate for inventory as this market. Appraisal waivers, waiving inspection, waiving loan approval deadlines… prior to January of last year it was pretty much unheard of. Fast forward a year and this market is even more desperate. And that would have been the case without us losing 1,000 homes in our market to the Marshall fire and without introducing even more buyers and renters into the fray. Turns out there was another level on the dial and we’re all seeing it right now. This isn’t just the case locally but nationally as well. Across the entire country there were 910,000 homes for sale in December. That’s down from 1,100,000 in November and 14% lower than this time last year. Compare that to the bubble like conditions we saw in 2007 when there were 3.7 million homes for sale and the population has only grown since then. First time home buyers are currently accounting for 30% of sales. A month ago I had mentioned that figured had dropped to 26% so there was some slight concern over them being priced out. That concern was unfounded as the number rebounded to what we’re used to seeing. CoreLogic released their Single Family Rent Report for November which showed rents increasing 11.5% year over year. This was the fastest increase in 16 years. With rents increasing it doesn’t give first time home buyers a lot of alternatives.
On the new construction front, housing starts rose 1.4% in December and ended the year up 2.5% year over year. A lot of the increase though was multi-unit dwellings. Single Family Residence starts (which is the more important component for our business) were actually down 11% year over year. Completions for Single Family Residences were down 6.6% year over year. Builder’s continue to struggle to keep pace with demand. Lastly, we got the 20 Year Treasury Bond auction which saw above average demand. This is what sparked the rally on Wednesday.
Next week we’ll be getting appreciation data (Case Shiller and FHFA) along with Home Sales Data and lastly more inflation data which seems to be setting records each report. There’s going to be a couple more months of heating inflation before the Fed is out of the Treasury and Mortgage Backed Securities market. Then it’s just a question of when do they hike rates and how quickly does it curb inflation?
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