In this weekly video, lender Jordan Keck provides a market snapshot covering recent mortgage‑rate movement (down to 6.22% from 6.26%), a detailed look at the latest CPI inflation numbers (0.1% month‑over‑month for October and November, YoY 2.7%), existing home‑sales activity (0.5% rise in November to a 4.13 million pace), initial and continuing jobless claims (initial claims fell to 224 k, continuing claims rose to 1.9 M), retail‑sales performance (flat in October, core retail up 0.8% after stripping volatile items), and the BLS jobs reports that show a net loss of about 100 k jobs over October‑November with the unemployment rate climbing to 4.6%. Keck links these data points to expectations for Federal Reserve policy and future rate cuts. He also shares a practical communication technique – the “accusation audit” from Chris Voss’s negotiation playbook – as a tool for delivering bad news in real‑estate transactions. The video ends with a holiday note about skipping next week’s update.
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Good morning and happy Friday. Jordan Keck here, your lender buddy, with your weekly market update. Wanted to start off by saying that next week here coming up on Christmas for Thursday, so we will not be having a market update next week. I'll still be available. Let me know if you need anything on it, but just taking a little bit of a break from the updates. So hope you have a great and very Merry Christmas holiday season here with family. As far as market rates moving down a little bit from 6.26% to 6.22%, partially as a result of some of the data that we got out about inflation and jobs reports, which we'll go over here. But nice to see a little bit of a positive trend there. We're now at the lowest that we've been in quite a little while here. As far as mortgage tip this week, a little bit off of the topic of mortgage and more just about conversations in general. I had a situation where I was helping somebody walk through a situation that they had to deliver bad news to their client, and they really, really benefited from something called an accusation audit. If you've ever read Chris Voss's book, Never Split the Difference, I highly recommend it if you haven't. It's about an FBI hostage negotiator, and he talks through when you're delivering bad news to begin not sugarcoating it and just spitting it out. But by starting and looking at anything that the other person could accuse you of upfront— let's say a deal is going to fall through, something was missed— you might start by saying, "Hey, I've got some bad news you're not going to want to hear. Once I tell you this, you're probably going to think I'm a horrible real estate agent. You might think that I've lied to you, that I'm worthless, that all real estate agents are awful, and that, you know, I've severely wasted your time." Now, if you just stop there, people think, what in the world do you have to say? Whatever it is is either going to be exactly what you described. Just go, yep, okay, you said it. And it takes, you know, it takes the anger out of the situation there. Or look and go, oh, that's not bad at all. I don't think that you're horrible. I don't think that you lied. Yes, I'm frustrated, but this, you know, it's not as bad as you made it seem. So really great way to help start those conversations on the right foot. You're not dancing around it. You're not sugarcoating it. And the person that I helped with this has had an incredible response delivering bad news they had to the situation. So hopefully you can add that as a tool when you're in those unfortunate situations of having to deliver bad news. Next up here, as far as data for this week, we got the CPI, Consumer Price Index inflation reports for November coming in at only 0.1% for the last 2 months. Pretty low compared to what was expected. Now this is the catching up because we got both October and November's after they catch up from the government shutdown. So in total, between the two months, we only saw 0.2% in inflation, so 0.1% per month. On year over year, it slowed from 3% to 2.7%, below expectations it would remain flat. The core inflation, which stripping out food and energy prices, also came in at the same 0.1% per month, dropping from 3% to 2.6%. This is one of the data points that really helped for mortgage rates, because they're anticipating lower levels of inflation and or higher levels of unemployment are going to help the Fed decide to cut rates in the future. This is one of those things where markets are taking this into account now, so if the Fed decides to cut, it's partially because of data reports like this. Next up, existing home sales rose 0.5% in November to a 4.13 million pace. This is pretty close to estimates, but there was also a positive revision for October. Without that, November would have been up about 1% month over month. Sales year over year are down 1%. Next, initial jobless claims fell 13,000 to 224,000 for the week for first-time filers. Pretty normal level there. Continuing claims rose 67,000. This is pretty much what we thought might happen after last week we saw a pretty significant dip lower in continuing claims, partially because of the holiday weeks. With continuing claims now going back up to about 1.9 million where they've been, signals that that really wasn't the trend lower like we might have been hoping, but just a blip on the radar as a result of the holidays. Next, retail sales for October were flat, below the 1% or 0.1% gain that was expected. A lot of this though has to do because of the end of the auto sales electric vehicle credit that ended in September. So a lot of people who are buying vehicles finished those in September and didn't incentivize again for October. And so auto sales dragging down that number quite a bit. If you remove just auto sales, the retails for October were up by 0.4% just because auto sales were down so much. Similarly, core retail sales rose 0.8%, which is above estimates because that strips out food, auto, gas, building materials, and a few other items, showing that the consumer portion of spending is still very strong. Lastly here, the BLS jobs reports for October and November came out, also catching up after the government shutdown, showing a net of 41,000 job losses over those two months. October showed 105,000 job losses, much weaker than estimates and heavily influenced by the government layoffs. November showed 64,000 jobs created, which was slightly above the 45,000 that was expected. But there were negative revisions to the previous 2 months. August was revised lower from a 22,000 gain to a 26,000 loss, and September dropped from 119,000 job creations to 108,000, meaning there was a net of 59,000 fewer jobs in the previous 2 months due to those revisions. So if you add that on top of it, you've got nearly 100,000, actually right at 100,000 job losses reported in this report. The household survey, which is where the unemployment rate comes from, showed 96,000 job gains. But because the labor force increased by 323,000, the unemployment rate rose from 4.4% to 4.56%, which is rounded up to 4.6%. Pardon me. The unemployment rate has gone from 4.1% to 4.6% since July, and that is also another indicator for the market that mortgage rates have helped and that may help the Federal Reserve decide if they're going to continue cutting rates again in 2026. As always, hopefully this is helpful. Again, have a fantastic Christmas here, end of the year, and we will see you in a couple weeks. Take care.
