In this weekly market update, Jordan Keck (LenderBuddy) opens with a brief on rising mortgage rates, now hovering around 7.4% and notes that rates have previously spiked into the 8% range. He then delivers a mortgage‑tip focused on two consumer‑protection tools: (1) the phenomenon of “trigger leads,” where credit bureaus sell borrowers’ contact information after a full credit pull, leading to spam calls, and (2) the use of soft credit checks to give prospective borrowers credit insights without a hard inquiry. Keck recommends registering on doNotCall.gov and offers to provide soft‑check video walkthroughs. He moves to macro data: March retail sales rose 0.7% (well above the 0.3% forecast) with a revised February figure of 0.9%; core retail sales jumped 1.1% versus a 0.4% expectation, signaling continued consumer strength and persistent inflation pressures. The CoreLogic February rent report showed a 3.4% year‑over‑year increase—the highest in a decade—while the CPI shelter component rose 5.7%, indicating a lag between rent growth and broader shelter cost measures. Housing market metrics follow: existing‑home sales fell 4.3% in March (still better than estimates), year‑over‑year sales down 3.7%, inventory rose 4.7% to 1.11 million units, and average days on market slipped to 33. First‑time buyer share rose to 32% (up from 26%), while investor participation fell to 15%. Fed commentary is highlighted: Chair Jerome Powell expressed reduced confidence that inflation will hit the 2% target soon, suggesting rates may stay higher longer; the probability of a July rate cut is now around 50%. New York Fed President John Williams signaled openness to further rate hikes if data warrants, marking a shift from the previous “no‑hikes” stance. Jobless claims remained steady at 212,000, with continuing claims barely up. Finally, Keck promotes a monthly book club on "Unreasonable Hospitality," encouraging listeners to join the Facebook group and Zoom meetings to learn service‑oriented strategies for the real‑estate industry. Overall, the update blends data‑driven market analysis, practical mortgage advice, and a community‑building call‑to‑action.
Chapters
Good morning and happy Friday. Jordan Keck here, your LenderBuddy, with your weekly market update. Kicking off, interest rates continuing their move higher. 7.37% last week, now up to 7.44%, nearly 7.5% this week. We have seen rates this high and even higher, even touching up into the 8s, not that long ago. But definitely a departure from the lower trend that we were hoping to see so far. So as our weekly mortgage tip, let's touch on soft credit checks and trigger leads. You may already know about trigger leads, but essentially every time a client has a full mortgage credit report pulled, the credit bureaus themselves, so TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax, will actually sell their contact information whether or not the lender provides it. So typically the credit bureaus will have information provided from the creditors, already on the report from other loans that were sent in. So whether or not that information is accurate, that ends up getting sold in addition to the information that this client may be shopping for a mortgage. And I've had some clients say that they've gotten as many as 40 phone calls from other lenders within a 2-day period. So a couple things you can do to help on this one: you can go to donotcall.gov and tell your clients to get registered with their phone numbers. It's a lifetime registration on a government website. That prevents those spam calls from happening, or at least dramatically reduces them. And then the other one is looking at soft credit checks, right? And this is a great tool that if you've got clients who are hesitant to start the lending process, that maybe are 6 months out, 12 months out, 2 years out, and just want information about how to be able to improve their credit scores and get them in the right direction without doing an application and without doing a full credit report, soft credit check is a great way to do that. So make sure that you're telling your clients that talking with me is not just a matter of getting pre-approved, but can also help them guide towards where they want to go down the road. And one of the things that I do quite a bit is soft credit check reviews where I'll pull up their soft credit check and I'll send over a video walkthrough of the report, talking through what's there. So they see exactly what I'm looking at. And often for the first time in their life are getting somebody to actually explain their credit and what they can do to help improve it. So if anybody is interested in that, always happy to help get people in the right direction, whether I can help or not, just to make sure that they have somebody that can help them there. As far as updates this week, retail sales for March rose 0.7%, which was more than double the 0.3% that was expected. This wasn't really great. In addition, we also got an upward revision for February, which brought that number up from 0.6% to 0.9%. Core retail sales rose 1.1% for the month, almost triple the 0.4% expected. So really, really big number beat on this one and big reversal in the trend. I mean, this was down 0.3% 2 months ago and was flat last month before the revision. And so again, with the revised higher on the core rate of 0.3% higher as well last month, big beat. And so this was showing a lot of information to the Fed that sales are still strong, inflation is still present, and that's one of the reasons why we're seeing this uptick in mortgage rates again is because the data is no longer supporting that lowering amount of inflation. We'll get into that a little bit more here today. Next up, CoreLogic's rent report for February showed that rents were up 3.4% year over year, which is up quite a bit from the previous report that only showed up 2.6%. This is a blend between new rents and renewals on existing rents, But this is the highest year-over-year number in about 10 years. The latest CPI, Consumer Price Index, report showed shelter costs rise by 5.7%, which is still significantly higher than what we're seeing though in these rent reports. So hopefully that's just a result of the lag that we're seeing in that data and will continually drop down. But will it be too soon? Will it be too late? Tough to tell. Next up, existing home sales for March fell 4.3%, which which is actually much better than estimates. Year over year, we're down 3.7% for closings on existing homes, while inventory increased 4.7% month over month to 1.11 million units. The average days on market was 33, which is down from 38 that was in February. First-time homebuyers, this is interesting, made up 32% of all buyers for the month, which is up quite a bit from 26% in the prior report, and investors were subsequently down from, uh, to 20— to 15% from 21% in the previous report of all of those transactions. And next up here, Fed Chair Powell said as a result of this up a tick in retail sales data and inflation data here, says he is no longer confident that inflation is heading towards their goal of that 2% number. He said it will likely take longer to achieve that confidence, signaling that interest rates will stay higher for longer And while initially there was a lot of expectation that the Fed would look at 3 rate cuts this year, with the first one starting in probably May or June, the statistics on that, the chances on that are continually dropping with these stronger reports in. So even now, the chance of a July rate cut are hovering around 50%. And then in addition to that, New York Fed President John Williams came out yesterday saying that he was not opposed to even hiking rates higher if data came out showing that that was necessary. Where until now, the Fed had pretty much said that rate cuts— or excuse me, rate hikes are off the table. We're definitely going to cut rates, it's just a matter of when and how much. And it looks like they're starting to give themselves wiggle room to change that narrative now since everything is data dependent and the data has been coming in very strong. Lastly here, initial jobless claims, not really much to talk about here. No change at 212,000 last week and this week. This week for first-time claims and then continuing claims only up slightly, 2,000 to 1.812 million. So holding very, very stable and steady there. And so wanted to also give a reminder, if you're not already in the book club, we've got a book club we're going through once a month, going through 7 chapters at a time for the book Unreasonable Hospitality. Great book. If you haven't already read this one, get it, even if you're not part of the book club. But we're going through just ways to implement it into your business, set yourself apart, and really enhance your level of service, especially now when our service and value in the real estate industry is being criticized and targeted way more than ever before. So do yourself a favor and do us a favor as well. Join us on this, links below for the Facebook group. You'll get information about the Zoom or in-person meetings you can join and love to hear you be a part of that and share that experience. As well. Hope you have a fantastic weekend. I'm available if you need anything. Give me a call or text, and I'll talk to you next time. Take care.
