Could Mortgage Interest Rates Be On The Decline?
Good Monday Morning!
Both Pending and Closed sales have continued to decline both nationally and here in the Eugene Springfield area. We are now in 2024 and what will the national and local housing market be like this year? There is some light coming through this tough Real Estate market as we have watched mortgage interest rates decline slightly. The forecast is that rates will continue to decline over the next several months. If rates do decline, then look for both pending and closed home sales to do an about-face and begin to bounce back. The rate and amount of any recovery here will depend upon the extent of the mortgage rate reductions. I will keep you updated as we move forward. The following is a short article from "Realtor.com".
The numbers: Pending home sales were flat in November compared with the previous month, according to the monthly index released Thursday by the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
The Pending Home Sales Index remained at 71.6 in November from the prior month.
Economists were expecting the index to rise 1% in November, according to a survey by the Wall Street Journal.
Year-on-year, pending home sales are down 5.2%.
Key details: Sales were up in the Northeast, Midwest and West in November but dropped in the South.
Big picture: Pending home sales tend to lead existing home sales by a month or two. They have been on a downward trend this year.
With mortgage rates having declined over the past two months, economists see a modest rebound in home sales ahead.
This could cause housing inflation to remain elevated, complicating the Fed’s job to get inflation down to 2%, said Torsten Slock, chief economist at Apollo Global Management.
What the NAR said: “Although declining mortgage rates did not induce more homebuyers to submit formal contracts in November, it has sparked a surge in interest, as evidenced by a higher number of lockbox openings,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, in a statement along with the data.
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