In this weekly market update, lender Jordan Keck provides a concise snapshot of current mortgage‑rate trends, explains the unique timing and communication challenges of VA appraisals, reviews the latest personal consumption expenditures (PCE) inflation numbers, reports on March home‑price appreciation from the Case‑Shiller and FHFA indices, highlights a surprisingly strong Conference Board Consumer Confidence reading, notes a sharp 7.7% drop in pending home‑sale contracts for April, and summarizes CoreLogic’s March loan‑performance data showing a modest decline in 30‑day delinquencies but a slight rise in 90‑day+ delinquencies and steady foreclosures. He closes with a friendly invitation to a June 28 poker night. The update is delivered in a conversational, informational tone, with a generally neutral‑to‑cautiously‑optimistic sentiment toward the housing market despite mixed signals.
Chapters
Good morning and happy Friday. Jordan Keck here, your lender buddy, with your weekly market update. Crazy thing to say, is the last day of May going into June tomorrow, so hopefully everybody has a great sunny weekend. Starting off, interest rates here are moving up a little bit. Last week at 7.16%, this week at 7.29% according to Mortgage News Daily. As a reminder, that's just an estimate for the top-tier loan scenario across the country from different lenders, so every client scenario is going to be different. This is really just a way to track where rates are moving from one week to the next, not something to be quoting out to clients directly. As far as weekly mortgage tip this week, wanted to talk about VA appraisals, because there are a lot of nuances that make these different than conventional, FHA, or USDA appraisals. The biggest one being at the start that we don't go through an appraisal management company. We go through the VA portal directly. When that happens, it automatically gets assigned to an appraiser. So we actually know as a lender who that appraiser is going to be immediately, as opposed to every other loan type going through an appraisal management company. We don't know who that appraiser is until the report comes back. One of the drawbacks of this system though, is that we don't get a due date. There's not an ETA on the report. There's very little, if any, communication with the appraiser until the report comes back. In Oregon, VA allows appraisers to have up to 15 business days, so 3 weeks, to deliver that report, and saying that as long as it's back before that date, it's not late. Even though the standard right now is about 1 week from the time you order an appraisal until it comes back for conventional and FHA, even VA, a lot of appraisers are still delivering reports early, but technically they're not required to. So keep that in mind when ordering appraisals on VA specifically. Might want to err on the side of ordering those a little bit earlier to avoid getting in a situation where it comes in later than everybody had hoped to. So again, VA appraisals, just not, not as streamlined, not as quick as others can be. So it's a little bit of a gamble there on when you're going to get it back. Next up here, PCE, the personal consumption expenditures. Inflation data for the month came out, and headline number was up in line with estimates at 0.3%. Year over year remained stable at 2.7%, no change from the previous report. The core rate, which strips out food and energy prices, that rose 0.2% for the month, which is actually 0.1% below estimates. Biggest reason for that is the headline number not being as low is because energy rose 1.2% in cost, for the month alone, so of course when you strip that out, actual inflation beyond that was down a little bit below expectations there. Next up, Case-Shiller and FHFA home appreciation came out for the month of March, showing prices up 0.3% and 0.1% respectively. Case-Shiller number is seasonally adjusted, so it takes into account that there's usually stronger summer appreciation numbers, but if you take out that adjustment, the unadjusted number is grows 1.3% for the month alone. Case-Shiller is now up 6.5% year over year. FHFA is now up 6.7%, just slightly down from the previous report of 7, but still both up 6.5 or more percent for both of those. Been a strong year for values. Next up, the Consumer— the Conference Board for Consumer Confidence report. Oh, it can see that The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Report came in at a strong 102 reading, which is well above estimates of only 96. The increase is from a previous reading of 97, which is very strong considering it was expected to decrease, not increase, and certainly not this measure as well. Within the report, the present situation and expectations both improved sentiment about those two things. Higher income earners did see an outsized increase in confidence, likely due to strong stock market performance. And year over year, the 1-year inflation expectations moved up from 5.3% to 5.4%. Again, people expecting 5.4% inflation within this next year. So that was not a great part of that report. Next up, pending home sales. So signed contracts, not closings. That rose— excuse me, it fell 7.7% in April, far below estimates of just the 0.6% decline. This came after a very strong number in March and is likely due to higher rates that we saw during the month, which impacted and likely impacted those signed contracts. Year-over-year sales now down 7.4%. And lastly here, CoreLogic's Loan Performance Insight Report for March showed those mortgages that are 30 days late or more did drop from 2.6— dropped to 2.6% from the previous report of 2.8%. So nice little drop there. We did see an increase in those that are 90 days late or more, moved up slightly from 0.9% to 1.1%, and then those in foreclosure remain unchanged at 0.3%. So even though the overall percentage of people late on their mortgages did decrease, those that were 90 days late or more did increase slightly. So maybe balance it out a little bit, definitely want to keep an eye on it. But again, very, very strong numbers for those mortgage delinquencies in general. As always, hope you have a fantastic weekend. Check out the link below as well. And let me know if you're interested in the next poker night will be Friday, June 28. We only have a couple of spots left. So let me know if you're interested and can commit to that. And I will send you some details. I'd love to have you there. It's a great time the last couple times we've done it. And so we'll be expanding to 3 tables this time. Again, hope to see you there. Have a fantastic weekend. Take care.
