News in end use

The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) has reported their Pending Homes Sales Index (PHSI), which is based on signed real estate contracts, not actual closings, for existing single-family homes, condos, and co-ops, declined -10.6% in February, to a reading of 110.3.

Freddie Mac has released its Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS) for the week ending April 22, 2021. The PMMS reports that 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 2.98% with an average 0.7 point, up slightly from last week when it averaged 2.97%.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported today (4-29-21) that its “advance” estimated Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for Q1 of 2021 increased at an annual rate of 6.4%. In Q4 of 2020, real GDP increased 4.3%.

The U.S. Department of Labor is reporting that an additional 553,000 Americans made their initial filing for unemployment benefits during the week ending on Saturday, April 24, 2021 — a decrease of 13,000 from the previous week’s revised level.

The U.S. Census Bureau reported on Tuesday (4-27-21) the results of their Q1 2021 residential vacancies and homeowner statistics. The national vacancy rate in Q1 2021 were 6.8% for rental housing and 0.9% for homeowner housing. Little changed from Q1 2020 rates of 6.6% and 0.3% higher than the Q4 2020 rate.

According to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Application Survey for the week ending April 23, 2021, the Market Composite Index — a measure of mortgage loan application volume — decreased -2.5% on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased -2% compared with the previous week.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Home Price Index (HPI) reports that U.S. house prices rose 0.9% from January 2021, but were up 12.2% year-over-year (February 2020 to February 2021). The previously reported 1.0 percent price change for January 2021 remained unchanged.

The most recent U.S. Census Bureau’s Quarterly Sales by Price and Financing with analysis provided by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) reveals that conventional loans financed the largest share of new home sales since 2018. The share of sales backed by conventional loans in the Q1 2021 increased 2.8 percentage points (quarter-over-quarter) to 71.6% and 2.1 percentage points since Q1 2020.

The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index, which covers all nine U.S. Census divisions, reported that home prices experienced a 12.0% annual gain in February 2021, up from 11.2% in January. The 10-City Composite annual increase came in at 11.7%, up from 10.9% in the previous month.

The latest Mortgage Banker Association’s (MBA) Forbearance and Call Survey reports that the total number of loans now in forbearance decreased by 1 basis point from 4.50% of servicers’ portfolio volume in the prior week to 4.49% as of April 18, 2021. According to MBA’s estimate, 2.25 million homeowners are in forbearance plans.