Investors With an Eye on Geopolitics Send Mortgage Rates Lower Despite Fed Hike
Rates fell despite Fed rate hike, largely due to comments from European Central Bank officials and escalating trade tensions between the United States and China.
Market Trends
Buying a Home Is Less Affordable Than It’s Been in Almost a Decade
A combination of rising mortgage rates and strong home value appreciation led to one of the largest quarter-over-quarter increases in the mortgage burden for homebuyers since the Great Recession.
May 2018 Existing Home Sales: Stuck
Increasingly what had been characterized as a flat plateau is starting to resemble a gentle downward slope: Month-over-month and year-over-year declines in sales have accelerated over the past three months.
Quiz: Which Paint Colors Help Your House Sell for More?
What color front door can boost the typical U.S. home sale price by 2.9 percent? Which living room color is likely to make the price of a typical home pop the most?
Rapid Reaction: May Existing Home Sales
May existing home sales fell 0.4 percent from April and 3 percent from a year ago, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.43 million, according to the National Association of Realtors. The fall represents the second straight monthly dip and third consecutive annual decline.
Mortgage Rates Drift Higher; Markets Digesting Fed Move, Comments
The Federal Reserve Board’s Open Market Committee (FOMC) increased its target short-term interest rate this afternoon, but the move had been widely anticipated and already priced into markets. However, economic projections from the FOMC members suggested a more aggressive path of rate hikes moving forward.
Vacation Home Markets Have Yet to Rebound From Housing Bust
As the appeal of vacation homes has steadily eroded over the past decade, markets with the highest densities of vacation homes have underperformed the market in all but one year since 2010.
Rising Trend of Stay-at-Home Dads Hits All-Time High
The overall share of U.S. children living with a full-time, stay-at-home parent was unchanged in 2017 compared to 2016, and has remained largely flat since the mid-1990s. But even as full-time, stay-at-home parenting overall has stabilized, the share of stay-at-home dads has reached an all-time high.
Geopolitical Uncertainty Wanes, Pushing Mortgage Rates Back Up
As it became clear in the second half of last week that there would be no need for early elections in Italy and Spain, global political risk waned and mortgage rates rose steadily in response.
Birth Rates Dropped Most in Counties Where Home Values Grew Most
A recent decline in fertility was sharpest in counties where home values rose the most, and the change was smaller—and sometimes even up —where home value growth was weaker.
