Kamisaraki, and welcome to the Metz Market Minute for the Chrisman Commentary.
Rates & Apps: Rates are up 15BPS for the week, now at a 9 month high. Applications fell 5%, and refinances were flat. Both are still above last year's levels, but are quickly losing that grouund.
Pending Sales: NAR came out with their pending sales. They showed April's numbers up 1.4% for the month. The Northeast carried the weight with a 6.6% increase, while the Southwest and South were both flat. Redfin's week-old data for pending sales showed them down, for a sneak preview of coming attractions. Speaking of weighting...
Numbers are tricky: Numbers don't lie, but statistics do. The NAHB headline stats showed promising numbers: Both housing starts and permits above expectations and positive progress. However, for starts single family was down 9% and multifamily up 10.3% for a 3 year high. Permits were similar, up 5.8% for the month. Good! Single family was down 2.6%, less good. Multi-family weighted it with a solid 21.8% increase. It really shows how the builders are biasing. Speaking of bias...
The Fed: Warsh was highly expected to go in and bring down rates, with almost magical hope. However, the Fed minutes showed that outside of Miran, 3 other members favored reducing the easing bias in language. The market now has 92% bets on a rate hike by January 2027, and with inflation numbers and the Iran situation continuing, not much helps deflect those bets.
Vantage: Both UWM and Rocket have begun advertising their programs with Vantage. Early results released online are showing several scenarios with 70+ point discrepancies between the two models, and according to advertisements the LLPAs don't adjust to keep pace. Great for originators taking advantage of the program. Lots of headaches and confusion for servicing and secondary folks.