What’s Ahead For Mortgage Rates This Week : October 5, 2009

Tag: Case-Shiller

Posted on in Mortgage Rates

What’s Ahead For Mortgage Rates This Week : October 5, 2009

Mortgage markets rallied for most of last week, but ended Friday on a sour note. After touching their lowest levels since Memorial Day, mortgage rates spiked to close out the week. Despite pricing getting worse by 1/4 percent Friday afternoon, however, mortgage rates still managed to fall for the second consecutive week. There were two main storylines last week on Wall Street.  The first was data-driven. After several months of better-than-expected results, the September Non-Farm Payrolls report fell well short of expectations. According to the government, another quarter-million jobs were lost last month, raising the 12-month tally to 5.75 million.  Additionally, consumer confidence figures dropped.  The stories are related and it brings us to the second storyline.  Without job growth, some analysts are openly wondering how the economy will ever start to expand.  Especially with the Holiday Shopping season getting underway. The negative vibes were enough to shake off an overwhelmingly positive series of housing reports.  Both Pending Home Sales and the Case-Shiller […]

by jberman
Posted on in Housing Market

Case-Shiller Index Shows Home Values Still Rising

For the second month in a row, 18 of the 20 Case-Shiller real estate markets posted higher home values.  It’s the 6th consecutive strong showing for the benchmark private-sector housing index. Combined with falling home supplies and rising sales figures, this month’s Case-Shiller Index suggests that housing may have bottomed sometime earlier this year. It’s cause for optimism. Even Case-Shiller respresentatives seem excited. In its press release, the publishers singled out the index’s winning streak, commenting on the recent “stabilization in national real estate values”. But, in that statement, we see the Case-Shiller Index’s biggest flaw.  The index ipurports itself to be a national real estate metric but, in reality, there is no such thing as a national real estate market. All real estate is local. The Case-Shiller Index reports home values for 20 U.S. cities.  Each of those cities, however, is comprised of smaller neighborhoods, each with its own character, desirability, and price points.  Case-Shiller attempts to lump it all together — an impossibility. As an example, […]

by jberman
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