| DID YOU KNOW? Mortgage application volume decreased 9.2% from the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index. The week’s results also include an adjustment for the Thanksgiving holiday. Refinance weakness caused the overall drop. Those applications fell 16% for the week but were 61% higher than the same week a year ago. (CNBC) DID YOU KNOW? In 2000, just before the Bush tax cuts and a recession, U.S. governments collected 28.3% of GDP in taxes. Today that figure has dropped to 24.3% of GDP in 2018, the 4th lowest in the OECD and down from 26.8% a year earlier and 25.9% in 2016. (WSJ)
DID YOU KNOW? Realtor.com predicts sales of existing homes will fall 1.8% compared with 2019. Home prices will flatten nationally, increasing just 0.8% annually, but in 25% of the 100 largest metropolitan markets, prices will fall. These include Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, Miami, St. Louis, Detroit, and San Francisco. Millennials will dominate the housing market, accounting for 50% of all mortgages by spring, according to the forecast. Just short of 5 million millennials will turn 30, which is when many people buy their first home, and the oldest will turn 39.
DID YOU KNOW? According to its 2019 U.S. Vacation Home Counties Report, between 2013 to 2018, the median sales price in vacation home counties increased at a slightly higher pace of 36% compared to the pace of increase of all existing and new homes sold, at 31%. (NAR)
DID YOU KNOW? National home prices increased 3.5% year over year in October 2019 and are forecast to increase by 5.4% from October 2019 to October 2020. The October 2019 HPI gain was down from the October 2018 gain of 5.2% and was up a bit from the September 2019 gain of 3.3%. Home prices have been increasing year over year in a narrow range of 3.2% to 3.5% over the past six months, indicating that the rate of home price growth is leveling off. (CORE LOGIC)
DID YOU KNOW? As a percentage of disposable income, we have the lowest debt service to income obligations in 40 years in the USA. (JP MORGAN) |
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