This info will probably not surprise you, but I find graphs very instructive so I’m sharing it anyway. This graph comes from the Mortgage Bankers Association and shows the number of loan applications for people hoping to buy a home over the last five years. We’re still only seeing about half of the volume we experienced in 2022, but volume is up 18% from this time last year and currently is the best in 36 months.
This tells me two things. The first is that I am average, which kind of sucks because we all want to feel special, right? The second is that the housing market is regaining momentum and the future looks brighter.
In two hours, we’ll hear the Fed’s rate decision along with their commentary on why they left rates untouched. The probability of a rate cut is only 2.8%, so I’m not going out very far on the prediction limb. And if if they do get cut, I’ll be plenty happy to be wrong. Because the market isn’t’ pricing in a rate reduction today, if it does happen, mortgage rates would follow almost in lock step over the next few trading sessions. So yeah, Lloyd Christmas and I are saying there’s a chance.
Truflation, which looks at 10 million data points as opposed to the official CPI & PCE’s 80,000, calculated real PCE at +1.39% and CPI at only +1.19%. These are more than 1% lower than the most recent officially published numbers by the BLS & BEA. And while one might argue that haggling over semantics is pointless, Truflation’s findings indicate that we’ve already hit the goal to reduce inflation to less than 2.0%. So bring on the lower interest rates I say!
