In this weekly market update, Jordan Keck greets viewers with holiday wishes and then provides a concise snapshot of current mortgage market conditions. He notes that mortgage rates have remained relatively flat, hovering around 6.9% for the week. Keck explains the concept of mortgage trigger leads—how credit bureaus sell borrowers’ contact information after a credit pull—and urges borrowers to register on the Do Not Call list (donotcall.gov) to avoid a flood of solicitation calls. He then reviews recent home‑price appreciation data, citing the Case‑Shiller and FHFA indices, both showing roughly a 6% year‑over‑year increase despite high rates, with a modest month‑to‑month change of about 0.1% (down for Case‑Shiller, up for FHFA). The segment moves to durable goods orders, reporting a 1.4% rise in February (above expectations) and a core durable goods increase of 0.7%, while noting revisions that lowered the prior month’s figures. Finally, Keck covers the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) inflation report, indicating a 0.3% month‑over‑month rise (slightly above forecasts) and a year‑over‑year increase to 2.5%, driven mainly by energy costs, with core PCE matching expectations. He closes with well‑wishes for the Easter weekend and a reminder to tune in next time.
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Good morning and happy Good Friday. Jordan Keck here, your lender buddy, with your weekly market update. As a reminder, this weekend is Easter, and so wishing everybody a very happy, safe Easter here, and, uh, just safe travel plans, whatever you may be doing. A little bit of a light week this week because of the holiday, even though it's technically not a closed business day today. Markets are closed, and so not a whole lot of news reports that have been coming out. So starting off, interest rates fairly steady. It's kind of an unofficial holiday week, so starting the week at 6.96%, ending at 6.91%. So not a huge change on that one, relatively flat. As far as this week's mortgage tip, I wanted to go through something that you may already be familiar with, which is mortgage trigger leads. Now, trigger leads are when somebody has their credit report pulled, the credit bureaus themselves will actually sell that person's contact info regardless of whether the mortgage company provides it or not. We don't, but the mortgage company— excuse me, the credit bureaus already have their contact information on file. This is provided by creditors who are reporting the data monthly. So they'll often have a phone number. They'll often have address, email address, potentially. And they sell that contact information. So when any time somebody pulls up a mortgage credit report, if they're not on the do not call list or they've opted out at optoutprescreen.com, they may get a bunch of phone calls from other lenders once they have their credit report pulled. In fact, I had one client that within a 2-day period had over 40 phone calls from other lenders. Because they hadn't registered on that Do Not Call list like I've been telling them to. So tell your clients about this. I mean, it can take a couple of weeks once they register for it to really process and go through. So the sooner they can get on it, the better, to avoid them having to get overwhelmed with phone calls in the middle of a process. So if you can tell your clients about this, get them registered on donotcall.gov. It takes about 30 seconds. Make sure to put your phone number on as well so you know what it looks like. Super easy. And again, the sooner they can get on that, the faster they're going to be moving along and not have to worry about those calls. All right, so next up point here, home appreciation came out from Case-Shiller and FHFA, coming in at up 1.1% for the month of January for both of those reports. As a reminder, of course, Case-Shiller takes into account all homes, whereas FHFA only takes into account homes that are financed under the maximum conventional county loan limit. Case-Shiller, they came in showing homes up 6% year over year, which is up from the previous report of 5.6%. Since last January was much lower than— though, and excuse me, I misspoke. It's not up 1%, or it's down 0.1% for this month. But even though it went down that 0.1% for the month, Case-Shiller is still showing up compared to the previous report, because January of 2023 was significantly worse than January of 2024. And then FHFA also showing up 6.3% year over year for homes. That is down from the previous one of 6.7%. So again, January of last year, not, um, you know, pretty bad for Case-Shiller, a little bit better for FHFA, but overall the same point still showing that homes are up roughly 6% year over year, even with rates being high in the market where it is. So make sure we're talking to our clients about that. $400,000 home up 6%. Huge increase right there. I mean, that is— what is that, $24,000 increase, $2,000 a month on average in value over the last year. Next up, durable goods orders. Those rose 1.4% for February, above the 1.1% expected. Not great, obviously, as we're trying to get inflation lower. Having these numbers come in higher is not the direction that we want to be. But the nice part is January was also revised lower from -6.1% to -6.9%. So even though the headline number here beat, you know, 0.3%, there was a -0.8% revision for the previous month. So that definitely helped to taper it. The core durable goods rose 0.7%, which was stronger than the 0.1% expected. But again, January was also revised lower on the core, down half of a percent from a 0.1 increase to a negative or a drop of 0.4%. And then lastly here, PCE inflation. This is the one the Fed really looks at. This came in for February rising 0.3%, which is 0.1% above expectations. That was kind of tempered though because January, the previous report, was revised lower 0.1%. So it ends up pretty much being a wash between the two. Year over year, inflation rose from 2.4% to 2.5%, which was as expected. Mostly driven by increasing energy costs, as we've all been seeing at the gas pump. And then core PCE, which you strip out food and energy prices, rose 0.3% for the month as well, which was right in line with estimates. And then the previous month report was still increased or revised higher by that 0.1%. Again, hope you have a wonderful weekend. Have a great time. We will see you next time. Take care.
