Weekly active housing inventory growth slowed a bit last week, but is still doing better than in 2023. I have a simple model where mortgage rates exceed 7.25%: Weekly inventory data should grow between 11,000-17,000 per week. Last year, we never achieved that goal. We’ve seen that now for a couple of weeks as the stock grows 13,247.
Weekly housing inventory data
We have now had consecutive weeks of healthy housing inventory growth and the spring of 2024 is healthier than the spring of 2023. Last year, we did not have any weeks of weekly active inventory growth above 11,000. Aside from the week after Easter, we had two weeks in a row The stock is growing healthy, and next week we should pass the 2023 high for the stock.
- Weekly Inventory Change (April 19-26): Stock rose from 543,044 to 556,291
- Same week last year (April 14-21): Inventory rose from 414,701 to 421,924
- The all-time low for the stock was in 2022 at 240,194
- Peak inventory for 2023 was 569,898
- For some context, this week’s active listings are in 2015 He was 1,071,283
New listings data
Another positive story for 2024 is that we have more sellers who will be buyers. That’s not saying much considering 2023 had the lowest level of new listings ever recorded, but it’s still a plus in my book. Here’s last week’s new listings data over the past several years:
- 2024: 70,665
- 2023: 63,236
- 2022: 72,009
Price reduction percentage
On average, a third of homes are experiencing price reductions – this is standard housing activity. When mortgage rates rise, demand declines and rate reductions grow. When prices fall and demand improves, the ratio decreases.
We had an abnormal decline last week, which I don’t think was accurate because it happened in a week where we had good stock growth. The growth this week makes more sense given the data we’ve had over the past 14 days.
- 2024: 32.5%
- 2023: 29.2%
- 2022: 19.2%
10 year yield and mortgage rates
Economic data created major events last week that sent the bond market reeling with the GDP report, unemployment claims and the Fed’s favorite inflation data, personal consumption expenditures.
The GDP report came as a big surprise, but the internal details of the report showed strong spending and prices paid were high. This caused the 10-year bond yield to rise because the unemployment claims data came in very good as well. Then the inflation report came in a little hotter than estimates. However, I think bond traders were expecting something hotter than the month-to-month core CPI reading of 0.3%, so the bond market rallied and sent yields lower. All in all, we ended the week the same way we started it.
Mortgage spread data got worse last week. However, they are much improved this year compared to last year, when mortgage rates would have been 31 basis points higher if we had similar spreads.
Purchase app data
Purchase order data did not see much movement last week on a week-on-week basis, but still showed double-digit declines from a year ago. Purchasing app data has collapsed so much that we have a very low bar to show future growth, so keep that in mind as we start to see growth. Last week we saw a 1% decline week over week, and we were also down 15% year over year.
Since November 2023, when mortgage rates started to fall, it has been happening 11 positive edition Reverse Eight negative prints And Two flat prints Week to week. For a year now, we have had it Five positive prints, Eight negative prints And Two flat prints.
Next week: Jobs Week, Employment Cost Index and House Prices
It’s going to be a big data week, as jobs week always is. However, considering the 10-year bond yield, this week’s data will be more important than previous months. We also have the Labor Costs Index, which the Fed tracks quarterly, and we have national housing price data. So this could be a busy week for mortgage rates as the all-important business data is key to rates coming out for the rest of the year. Once labor data starts to show some real weakness, this is a more favorable economic backdrop for interest rates to fall and stay low. However, at the moment, the labor market has become softer, but not broken. Hopefully we will see a third straight week of stock growth.
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