12/29/2018
Courtesy Deb Champion
Wells Fargo home loans -
Existing home sales rose 1.9% in November, its second consecutive monthly increase after six straight months of declines. Year-to-date, existing home sales are running 2.3% below the sales of the first eleven months of 2017. The median price of existing homes sold in November was $257,700, a 4.2% increase over November 2017.1
About 1.74 million existing homes were on the market in November, a 4.2% increase in the inventory level since November 2017.1
The yield on 10-year Treasury securities, a leading guidepost for pricing mortgages, closed at 2.74% on Christmas Eve, its lowest level since early April 2018. After averaging 3.12% in November, the yield closed below 3% on December 1 and has remained under 3% in every trading session since. In November 2017, it averaged 2.35%.2
The Federal Reserve raised its target range for the federal funds rate on December 19, its fourth 25-basis point increase this year. The target range, the Fed’s primary policy lever for short-term interest rates, is now 2.25% to 2.50%. The associated policy statement about the move, comments from Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, and the Fed’s economic projections all suggested slower economic growth in 2019 and, consequently, less tightening next year than had been anticipated until just recently.3,4
For the fifth time in the past six quarters, residential investment declined during the third quarter. It’s still 0.5% higher than it was a year ago, thanks to a big gain in the fourth quarter of 2017. Residential investment has risen at a 5.2% average annual rate so far during this recovery.5
Industrial production grew 0.6% in November, generating a 3.9% gain over the past year. Over the last five years, industrial production has grown at a 1.2% average annual rate.6
The average rate on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages in Freddie Mac’s survey was 4.55% during the week ending December 27, a drop of 8 basis points from the previous week. It averaged 4.64% during December, down from the November average of 4.87%, which was the highest monthly average since February 2011. All rates quoted have fees and points averaging 0.4% to 0.5% of the loan amount.7