Step Inside The Market - Week 13, 2023

Happy Friday!

In this week’s recap, we will be focusing on the overall mortgage market, rates, applications and some interesting trends heading into the Spring/Summer buying season!

🙌The average 30 year fixed rate for a conforming loan, per FRED, decreased to 6.32% from 6.42%, continuing a downward trajectory from throughout the year. Even though rates remain higher than a year ago this week (4.67%), buying is still very much on the table for your clients that can afford it! Remember, mortgage rates are cyclical and most clients buying now will be able to benefit from a refinance in the future!

🙀Even though rates continue to come down, the overall health of the banking sector and credit conditions should be closely monitored over the next few months. If this continues to be a rocky time for lenders, we may see a tightening of credit, per MarketWatch.

🛦Overall, mortgage demand has continued to increase this week, with a 2.9% increase on a week over week basis. Refinances applications are up 5%, while purchase applications have increased by 2%.

🕺Over the course of February, US home building surged by 9.8%! These numbers are extremely promising as many of these new builds will be set to hit the market during the late summer buying season. However, home building is still down 18.4% year over year. Much of this lagging is due to the huge spike we saw in mortgage rates during Q2 and Q3 2022, so these improvements are a great sign of the overall resurgence of the residential housing market!

📌Something to keep an eye on is the overall trend of home prices lowering in the Western United States, while they continue to rise in the Eastern United States. It's important to keep this in mind to better educate your clients on the overall strength of the regional real estate markets you operate in.

🤯Keeping on the topic of home prices, the median home price in the US is now at $363,000. Economists said increases in mortgage rates in the coming months will largely determine whether home prices will soon fall below that figure.

Thanks for reading!