WSJ: “Average Rate on a 30-year, Fixed-Rate Mortgage was 3.75% Last Week, Down from 4.94% in November” Sooner or later, industry mavens predicting higher mortgage rates will be right. But not this year. From a peak of almost 5% late last Fall, rates fell to 3.75% last week. Count that the 4th (7th? 9th?) year...Read More
Dow Jones Drops 414 Points to Close at 22,445 Say what you will about the housing market’s up’s and down’s. But, I don’t know anyone who bought a home in early October for $270,000, that’s suddenly worth only $225,000 scarcely 10 weeks later. Yet, that’s almost exactly what’s just happened in the stock market. Just subtract...Read More
Chances of Selling: “Possibly” vs. “0%, 100% Guaranteed” “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King.” —proverb The real estate corollary to the proverb above? “During a time of year when inventory of good homes is depleted, and lots of “For Sale” homes are temporarily off the market (“TNAS,” or Temporarily Not...Read More
All Eyes on the Fed How will rocky stocks — down another 2% in early trading today — affect the housing market? My knee-jerk response is to cite Chinese leader Mao Zedong, who, when asked (in 1950), “What’s the significance of the French Revolution?,” responded, “it’s too soon too tell.” So, if stocks quickly rebound in the...Read More
“So Done” vs. “Are You Done Yet?” For an unassuming four letter word, “done” sure has a lot of different connotations. I count at least eight (below), including two meanings ” one good, one bad ” popular in residential real estate. One. To perfection. Example: “That house is done. It’s not staged like a spec house.”...Read More
Flight to Safety No, I don’t think a nuclear conflagration would be good for the U.S. housing market (or anything else). And, there’s no denying that ongoing North Korea – U.S. saber-rattling may have a chilling effect on nervous home Buyers. But, in the meantime, one of the predictable side effects of major geopolitical uncertainty...Read More
