In this weekly market update, mortgage lender Jordan Keck confirms his continued affiliation with Advantage Mortgage and TW Lending Group, emphasizing his expanded capability to serve both residential and commercial clients as a one‑stop shop. He reports that mortgage rates have ticked up slightly to the 6.91‑6.94% range and offers a detailed strategy to prevent borrowers from switching lenders after going under contract, recommending early rate‑shopping conversations and presenting multiple lender options to lock in client commitment. Keck then shifts to macro‑economic news: a 90‑day US‑China trade pause reduces tariffs on Chinese goods to roughly 30% (down from 145%), signaling a modest thaw in trade tensions. He reviews inflation data, noting April CPI rose 0.2% month‑over‑month (YoY 2.3%) and core CPI held steady, while the PPI fell 0.5% MoM (YoY 2.4%), both indicating easing price pressures. The rental market segment shows new rents down 1.7% YoY for the 21st consecutive month and multifamily vacancy climbing to 7.1% in Q1, suggesting short‑term downward pressure on rents. Finally, Keck covers April retail sales, which edged up 0.1% versus expectations, though core retail sales slipped, implying limited consumer spending strength. He concludes that lower inflation and modest retail activity improve the odds of future rate cuts, offering reassurance to clients and industry peers.
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Good morning and happy Friday. Jordan Keck here, your lender buddy, with your weekly market update. One thing I do want to clarify for anybody who saw my Facebook post, my LinkedIn post, I am still with Advantage Mortgage and with TW Lending Group, staying on the residential side and adding the commercial side there. So If you are worried about me getting out of the residential side, do not worry. I'm still here for you. Now being able to have a team on the commercial side so that I can have more support on both and not have to be pulled away one way or the other. So especially for self-employed clients, a lot of the times needing help with their personal primary residence, investment properties on conventional financing, potentially even commercial buildings, I can now address all of those needs as a one-stop shop. With a huge amount of support. So don't, uh, don't take me off your call list if you were worried about me getting out of residential. Still there, still with advantage for that. As far as interest rates go, fairly even overall. We did see some increases in the last week. Yesterday and today looking a little bit better, but still coming in a little higher, going from 6.91 to 6.94. Because of that, wanted to talk this week about how to prevent your clients from switching mid-contract. So somebody is looking to switch their lender, never helpful. At best, you lose time, there's more uncertainty added into the transaction, nobody appreciates it. And, you know, best case scenario, your client ends up getting a better deal for it. But there has to be a better way. Typically as well, whenever you see a lot of rate volatility, whenever rates are going up, people just shop more, they feel feel like they want to try and get the best deal, whereas rates are staying flat or going down, you don't typically see nearly as much rate shopping. So because of that, I wanted to be able to give you some tips on how you can prevent this moving forward, and it might seem a little bit counterintuitive. You see, when somebody's shopping for rates, oftentimes they don't necessarily know that that's something they should do earlier in the process, and it's not until they get their initial loan estimate, they're under contract, and now it seems real that they think, oh, maybe I should look around for a better deal. Of course, by that point, there's already been a lot of value given in relationship. So hopefully that stays there. But what you can do is actually prompt your clients to have that conversation about rates before getting pre-approved or while they're getting pre-approved. You know, if I'm on your list, hopefully that I am as somebody to talk to, I actually appreciate being the second call. Now, again, this is one of those strange things because Most of the time people will choose the first lender they talk to, but if you can say, hey, I'm going to give you a couple different names, and it can be an online lender, let's say it'd be your LendingTree lead. I've heard a few different companies who are really kind of racing to the bottom right now on that and say, talk to them first. They're going to be a better rate than Jordan is, than, you know, fill in the blank lender is. But what you get sometimes is what you pay for. So talk to them, talk to Jordan, and then you decide which is worth it upfront. 'Cause now you're providing additional value, you're giving a high service and a high, you know, high, low cost or fee option on it, and then being able to compare. Sometimes it's gonna be very close, sometimes it might be farther away, but after they shop up front, they're almost never going to repeat that process again once they get under contract, so that you've cemented that their choice is gonna be their final choice and not have to worry about changing later. If you need help with any scripting around that in a way you can do it with high service, high value there. Happy to be able to help communicate that with you. But again, just something that as we're seeing a lot more, wanting to make sure deals go through, there's not a lot of volatility, great thing to implement. As far as our news for the week, the US and China did come to a trade deal over the weekend after their first meeting. This isn't a comprehensive deal. This is for at least 90 days, there's going to be a pause. And just from going to their baseline tariff of 10% for the US, plus the 20% fentanyl-related tariff remaining in place. So about 30% on Chinese goods, down from the 145% previously imposed, which essentially halted all trade. Last Friday, there wasn't even a single cargo ship that departed from China, the first time since COVID that that happened, showing just how much the tariffs have impacted Chinese export to the US. There will be another meeting again in a few weeks to work on a longer-term, more comprehensive agreement. But good to be able to see some movement there in the short term. As far as inflation goes, April CPI, the Consumer Price Index report, came in slightly lower than expectations at 0.2% for the month. The expectation was at 0.3%. Year over year dropped from 2.4% to 2.3%, which was helped by declining food prices and gasoline prices. So we've continued to see the value or price of crude oil go down, hopefully seeing more and more of that relief at the pump. And the core rate, which strips out food and energy, increased by 0.2%, right in line with estimates, and year-over-year remained at 2.8%. Fairly, you know, low-risk report overall. What was helping a little bit that came in yesterday was the PPI wholesale inflation report for April. This showed a decrease of 0.5%, a full half a point down, and the expectation was that it would come in at a 0.2% gain. So a big miss on that one. There were some revisions in March which added a little bit of strength that brought that from negative to, from a negative 4 to flat. So almost a half a point, but still bigger beat on the headline number. Year over year was revised up in March from 2.7 to 3.4% year over year for PPI inflation. But in April, because of this report, dropped down to only 2.4, which is still below expectations even with the revisions. The core reading dropped to 0.4% or showed a 0.4% drop. But even with the March revisions higher on that one, still came in 0.2% below estimates with the year-over-year dropping to 3.1%. Overall positive wholesale inflation number. And remember, wholesale inflation usually ends up getting passed along to consumer inflation because wholesalers either have the option of keeping that additional amount for profit or reducing their prices to consumers. So it's usually seen as an indicator of what will be happening with consumer inflation numbers that the Fed cares about the most. Next up, Realtor.com reported that new rents— so rents for those who are new to a place versus renewal rents— dropped 1.7% year over year in April. This is the 21st consecutive month in a row of year-over-year declines, with declines accelerating, likely due to higher vacancy rates. And we've seen a lot of inventory come on the market, and you've got multi-family that was started 1 to 2 years ago coming on the market here. And well, how long will this trend continue? Tough to say. It's definitely going to be more impacted locally where builders are going to be building the most, where people are moving to or moving from. Vacancy rose to a total of 7.1% in Q1 for this year, which is the highest since Q2 of 2018. So again, if this is going to be a new trend for a while, looking at the years ahead from the permits and the, the multifamily starts in the last couple of years, likely going to see a lot less inventory coming on the market soon. So this might be something just in the meantime, you know, gets 1, 2, maybe 3 years out before we start seeing some more upward pressure on new rents there. And lastly here, retail sales for April from consumer spending came in up 0.1%. Stronger than expectations of a zero reading, but still very, very low overall for consumer spending numbers for retail sales. Looking into the details of the report, though, it did come in a little bit weaker because core retail sales fell 0.2%, but was expected to come in a whole half a point above that with an increase of 0.3%. Again, even though the headline numbers came in above estimates, 0.1%, very low overall, and consuming spending retail sales is one of the indicators and one of the issues that can help to drive inflation higher. So the lower this number is, the better it is for inflation. The lower inflation, the better chance we get of seeing some rate cuts and relief on the mortgage market. So as always, hopefully this is helpful for you. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next time. Take care.
