The mortgage interest has fallen sharply in recent weeks
“The mortgage prices must be a bit lower today,” he said. “The return of 10 years is everywhere on the map this morning, ranging between 4.11% to 4.18%, because the stock market is selling more and more money in bonds.”
The Federal Reserve will hold his next meeting in two weeks, and although central bankers are not expected to change the federal fund percentage, it would keep stable at the reach of 4.25% to 4.5% as a sign of stability for a housing market that has been volatile lately. The FED kept the rates unchanged in January, which ended a line of three straight cuts that amounted to a total of 100 bps.
The CME Group’s Fedwatch -Tool On Tuesday it turned out that 89% of interest rate traders expect the Fed to keep the rates unchanged after their meeting of 19 March. But they are a lot of bullisher about changes in May, because 45% predicts a speed reduction of 25 BPS.
The February report report, which will be released on Friday, can indicate the direction of the FED. The consensus prediction requires that 160,000 new jobs are added, an increase in the 143,000 additions in January. This would be a clear headwind for further rate reductions.
Higher rates in January took a toll on the refinancing activities, because the advance payment percentage fell by 16.1% from December to the lowest level in almost a year, according to the latest Mortgage monitor report by Intercontinental exchange (ICE).
ICE also noted that house prices were illuminated during the month in about a quarter of the 100 largest markets in the country. Six experienced prize of the 50 largest markets decreased during the year that ended in January. These were led by Sun Belt cities such as Austin (-2.8%), Tampa (-2.6%), Jacksonville (-1.4%) and San Antonio (-1.3%).
Conversely, markets in the northeast witness the highest rates of appreciation. Fourteen cities saw the annual price growth of at least 5%, ICE reported, led by Buffalo, New York (+9.1%); Providence, Rhode Island (+8.7%); Hartford, Connecticut (+8.4%); and Cleveland (+6.8%).
Altos Research President Mike Simonsen wrote this week that “we are still a way of a meaningful shift in the trends of the housing demand.” Simonsen noted that the 60,000 pending the turnover of single -family homes year after year has fallen by 3%, even if the 639,000 houses that are for sale are for sale have risen by 28%.
“The collection meals of the hanging sale numbers is that it takes approximately 35 days on average before the sale is closed, so houses in contract will now generally close in March,” Simonsen wrote. “We know that there are fewer houses in contract at the end of February than last year, so we are insight into the sale of home for the first quarter of 2025 will be under Q1 2024.”
This goes against the prediction of Housingwire that was released at the end of last year, so that the sale of houses would rise by 5%in 2025.
Although transaction activity continues to run lower than housing professionals, his data released on Monday is Leentre Show that First home buyers are blooming in a relative sense.
First buyers represented 61%of all mortgage deals on the LendingTree platform in 2024. This share was even higher in dural states such as New York (76.1%), California (70%) and New Jersey (69.2%). The company also reported that these buyers tend to have lower credit scores, down payments and lending sizes than repeated buyers.
“It is all the sense of the world that most mortgage offers would go to first buyers today,” said Matt Schulz, the most important consumer financing analyst in LendingTree, in a statement.
“So many homeowners probably feel trapped because they bought their current place when the rates were really low. They do not want to trade their current low-rate deal for the much higher rates of today, so they just don’t move. First buyers don’t have that problem. “
