For Christmas I’m giving out hand-decorated green and red charts.  You’re welcome.

MBS continue to skirt across the plateau of six month high prices, which is giving us six month low interest rates.  Merry Christmas to everyone. Don’t expect much changing until Thursday and Friday when PCE & GDP come out.

Rent prices are up 2.5% from last year, according to Core Logic.  That has retreated 1/10% from last month’s gain.  That marginal decline is due in part to a significant number of large projects that recently came on line and are offering discounted leases to fill the units quickly.

Building permits are down 2.5% from a month ago, but still up 4.0% year-over-year. The 15% jump in Housing Starts this month puts the year-over-year growth up 9.0%.  The 1.5M units being completed each year is well under the 2M needed to keep up with household formation.  Consequently, demand should stay high given the low number of existing homes on the market.