At the start of the new fiscal year(tomorrow), it appears the USDA Rural Housing program will operate under Continuing Resolution authorization until the Agricultural Appropriations budget is finalized. This frequently happens at the start of the new fiscal year when the House and Senate don't finalize the budget prior to year end.
As promised, last week's reports gave us a complete picture of the housing market in August. Housing Starts rose 10.5% month-over-month to a 598,000 annual rate, well ahead of the expected 550,000 number. Building Permits, which reflect builder sentiment further out, grew a more modest 1.8% month-over-month to a slightly smaller 569,000 annual rate. Thursday, Existing Home Sales came in UP 7.6% over July, at a 4.13 million annual rate. But let's remember, July was a record low, so this gain still left sales down 19% from August a year ago. The median price for Existing Homes, however, ticked up 0.8% year-over-year, as reported by the National Association of Realtors.
After several weeks of focus on Fed actions and events in foreign markets, domestic economic data was the primary influence on mortgage markets this week. Weaker than expected results from the data helped Austin mortgage rates, which ended the week lower.
The economic reports before Thanksgiving were packed with housing market data and, guess what, they were all extremely positive! Monday saw Existing Home Sales UP 10.1% to an annual rate of 6.10 million, the highest since February 2007. Sales are now UP 20% in the past two months and UP 36% from their January lows. Even better, the supply of existing homes was down to just 7 months, with inventories down to 3.57 million, the lowest level in almost three years. This puts existing homes very close to the 6-month supply level of a healthy housing market. The Case-Shiller 20-City Composite Home Price Index rose 0.3% in September. The index also showed its second consecutive quarterly increase, UP 3.1% for Q3, returning to August 2003 levels.
Weekly Unemployment Claims hit the tape this morning, up 35K [...]
