Today we’re diving into what fed members are saying about the September 20th meeting. The big question at hand: will they hike rates again??
Happy Friday, Brian Manning. Here the weekly update. Let’s get right to it. So Monday, this week was Labor Day. I can’t believe it. When I first moved to Colorado, I met this old timer. Who loved a hike. And he said to me, Just remember, every year you’re going to get to Labor Day and you’re going to think, Oh shit, what did I do all summer? And sure enough, this year, out of the blue, here comes Labor Day. And I just can’t even believe that we got there.
But Monday was Labor day, quiet a news day because all the markets were closed. Tuesday was relatively quiet as well. Wednesday we got some feedback from Black Knight. So Black Knight is one of the gold standards of reporting on housing information. Black Knight reported that in the month of July, home prices were up 1.5%. 1.5%! That’s insane. June was up seven tenths of a percent, and their yearly pace right now is home appreciation at 7.5%.
This morning there was an article in the Wall Street Journal and it said: a fallen home prices may already be over. We’ve been talking about this. There’s still buyer demand, there’s no inventory. And when you just have an imbalance of supply and demand, home prices are going to stay stable. And now we’ve seen them turn around. So great to see Black Knight and really strong housing information there.
I will tell you, have to be careful of the media. You got to watch the news. You got to be careful of CNBC. I call them the catastrophizers. They can make anything sound bad, but the core fundamentals of our market are still really good. Now the next really topic of the rest of this week is what’s the Federal Reserve going to do? Federal Reserve meets on September 20 and question is if they’re going to hike rates again.
We had a lot of Fed speak this week, a lot of Fed voting members talking. So we had Cleveland Fed president Loretta Messer. She was always very hawkish. She’s kind of toned down. We had Philly Fed President Patrick Harked. He’s saying that it might be appropriate to hold rates steady. We had Boston Fed President Collins, and his tone was of really not hiking rates or cutting. So it was kind of moving pretty neutral. We had Lori Logan talking about pausing rates, but maybe keeping the door open.
We had Fed President John Williams talking about being in favor of pausing rates. So we’ll have to wait and see what happens with the Federal Reserve. But the tone is definitely changing. One thing to pay attention to is they feel like inflation is coming down. And what they’re likely looking for now is employment and economy of the labor market. Well, the employment is a little bit wonky, but we have seen unemployment move from 3.5% to 3.8%. and recessions start when unemployment starts to move on the upswing, which is exactly what we’re seeing right now. So I don’t know if we’re going to go into recession or not. It’s really hard to say. There’s kind of conflicting information all over. But certainly the Federal Reserve is going to look at the employment data and what’s going on and figuring out if there’s time to cool that down.
Thursday this week, we got some feedback on just consumer debt. So, unfortunately, credit cards are at an all-time high. Credit card interest rates about a year ago were in the 14% range. Now they’re up to 25%. We also have student loan repayments that are coming into play just around the corner. If you’re impacted by this and you want to look at how to do a debt consolidation, let me know. We can help you. I know you might think, oh, I have a really low interest rate on my mortgage. It would not be worth refinancing from this crazy low interest rate to consolidate debt. But most times it would be. If we can identify the cash savings available for you on a monthly basis and do something prudent with those funds. I’m around all weekend if you have any questions, let me know. If you want to learn how we’re closing purchase transactions in 15 days, give me a call.
-Brian
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