Weekend Talking Points – ‘Cut Ahead’
National Real Estate News
The rate cuts are coming
The Fed kept short-term interest rates on hold (target range of 5.25-5.50%) for the 8th-straight FMOC meeting. But Fed Chairman Jerome Powell's comments during the press conference suggested that solid progress on inflation and the recent rise in the unemployment rate above 4% put a September 18 rate cut "on the table". [Source: Federal Reserve]
Mortgage rates drop
The US treasury and mortgage markets don't have to wait for the actual Fed rate cuts - they respond to new information (in this case, quite dovish) immediately. The yield on the 10-year US treasury has dropped from 4.3% to under 4.0% in just over a week, and that's helped average 30-yr mortgage rates drop to 6.62%. Finally, affordability is improving! [Source: Mortgage News Daily]
Another price record
Apart from a few big metros, home prices keep rising. The latest Case-Shiller data for May 2024 showed that the national home price index rose 0.3% month-over-month. That means that prices have already risen 1.8% in the first five months of the year. Annualize that, and you'd get 4.4%. The 'cost of waiting' for lower rates has been brutal: home prices have risen 14% in the last 2.5 years. [Source: S&P DJI]
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