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Mortgage Applications Drop - Hover Near 19 Year Lows
Despite being told by Bullard, Yellen (and numerous other Federal Reserve thinkers) that quantitative easing was aimed at improving the housing market, the data suggests that - somewhat predictably - it did very little for mom-and-pop organic real home-buyer but stoked speculation and fervor among fast-money cheap-funding investors (and as Marc Faber noted actually hurt the average homebuyer via un-affordability). The week-to-week ebbs and and flows in mortgage applications are notable (this week saw purchase applications drop 5% and back near recent lows) but a bigger picture glance at just where this "recovery" has been tells a very different story about confidence among home-buyers.
Mortgage applications for home purchases have basically flatlined since the Fed began QE and hover now just above their lowest levels since 1995...
Charts: Bloomberg
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You want your MBS? You can keep your MBS.
Who needs a mortgage when foreigners and 1%'rs are paying cash with all their unlaundered money?
I for one welcome our new over[land]lords...
THIS, to me, is amazing. (that it is considered news)
As interest rates grew, mortgage applications declined????
Whoa, dude, who'd a thunk.
booger, you call a 30 year at 4.125 high?
locked in mere days ago
what i notice is recovery=false
obamao has NOT been good for the housing market
and makes me wonder, if you could buy a house with an ebt card, how would the market be doing?
hmmmm,
why not!? Whats another trillion or 10
Drop the 30 year back to 3.0 and you will get this customer.
Get to work Ms. Yellen! Na, fuck that. I want a 2.5% 30 year mortgage. Ain't deflation a bitch?
You didn't build that.
You didn't grow that neither.
Time to buy a house is when no one wants to buy a house
First learn why noone wants to buy a house.
You learn that when you try to sell your house.
no customers
reason, no money
why?
no job
why no job?
no customers
Its a recovery, they say
Recovery is the new 1,000 ft glidepath for a 747.
1000 foot glide path from 35,000 feet
graph that
LOL !! Just look at the chart above !
blackrock with free funny money not to the rescue¿¿¿
It's the weather, right?
its not helping
people 'round these parts dont go house shopping during blizzards
He's dead Jim.
Because "he decided to expose himself to fatal warp core radiation in order to restore warp power to the Enterprise."
"Hurt" is an understatement.
Um, like, ITS THE FREAKIN' WEATHER !!!
Storm has lasted since 2005. Long winter.
2004 was peaky.
Careful there Rex; better visit your optometrist. You know the fed claims bubbles can't be identified in real-time...
Orwell says recovery so ... it's recovery. Otherwise we will chip you into recovery mode. Arm or back, you may choose yourself since we love freedom.
THE REAL ECONOMY!
IT'S THE OBAMALAISE ECONOMY!
Damn polar vortex. Screwing up a perfectly good el presidente Zero inspired recovery.
There's 4 or 5 of my neighbors that are doing full remodels on their homes right now. Everytime I walk by them I chuckle with a snide laugh. Some idiots never learn.
Let's take a HELOC and remodel the house at the top of the market honey. Just think about all the extra equity we will gain.
Farkin retards!
I put a new toilet in my 1,300 sqr ft 1957 crumbling brick rambler.
Didn't take out a loan, though.
What???!!! You didn't borrow the money to make the improvement?!
Why,... that's Un-American! Why do you hate America?!
Rex is a terrorist!!!
fucking 1 percenter
do you really NEED to have a toilet?
or are you just keeping up with the joneses?
I have not seen any significant remodels in almost 2 years in my neighborhood. I still see the occasional cape get knockded down and some ugly wannabe McMansion go up, but more and more of them are sitting unsold. There is no hiding the deflation in real estate (around me anyway)
We're not far behind you guys Fonz.
I think a lot of real people (not the Blackrock fucks) are downsizing and have vowed to avoid the fraudulent bankers forever.
A fellow ZH'er threw this link up a while ago. The guy built his house himself and saved a ton of money. He made this nice little blog about it.
http://littlehouseonthehill.weebly.com/
Thanks Chunga.
He did a nice job on the house and blog didn't he?
I notice there it's been updated...apparently some author saw it and you can get his e-book on how to build with rough-sawn green lumber for free.
where's the ebook chunga?
can't find it on his blog.
I just looked at the blog again (with all the pictures it loads slow on my muppet line) and searched the blog for the author, Larry Michael Hackenberg.
He says if you send him an email with the form he'll send it you. Our daughter said she was going to get a copy so I can ask her how she made out if you want.
That is agreat link. it serves to remind that houses are for comfort, shelter, and security. Not investments. Certainly not in this climarte where the vermin have their own rules and do not honor contracts. Or I should say the courts won't uphold contracts for hapless borrowers. The bank always wins and then they get to tap the federal government for bonuses.
I advise everyone who willlisten, never borrow money from a big(ish) bank. how many times has the human race been taught this lesson?
cool, thanks for making the effort, mate.
will drop him a line as well.
Nice link, bro, thanks.
It's the same way here Fonz. The only houses that are moving are 'investment' properties with cash, and first time home buyers via FHA loans. The mid range properties are not moving at all.
Funny you should mention that.
I've got remodel work coming out of my ears.
Goto go and make hay while the sun shines.
There aren't many (if any) updates you can throw in a home that will fully return dollar-for-dollar(+) what you put into it. Throwing money into home upgrades for the sake of one day getting more equity out is... a fool's errand (imho).
Here are some updates that will really pay off:
Proximity fuses. Claymore mines. Your own personal "eye in the sky."
A midget that laughs at you as you try and escape.
"A midget that laughs at you as you try and escape."
Da Plane! Da Plane!
Insecurity Rules today..........
This drop in home mortgages is a function of the fact that only people who really need to buy or sell are doing so today. No matter how bad the economy is a minimum number of families and individuals still need to move, buy, and sell. That is because of job changes (losses), new members of the family being born (or moving back in?), or, today, the desire to slide further off-grid.
People today just aren't buying the bigger, better, McMansion in nearly the numbers we saw in the pre-2008 days. Only Gov't workers can afford to upgrade for the benefit of the Joneses and allot of them are sniffing the wind and deciding to hunker down instead.
Also, the largest portion of home construction is in multi unit housing, eligible to be subsidized by you and me (assuming you are still a tax payer like me). Last, the number of cash transactions is mind boggling as resources move from the ether back into more tangible investments like residential properties that can be section-8 candidates, gold, and farms.
My conclusion is there is no recovery and there is very little long term hope for economic expansion. On the bright side, the GOP just gave the FOOs a year's worth of printing press priviledges with "no strings". So we have that going for US.
Remember: FOO = Friend Of Obama
No substitute for new construction.
Everything else depreciates or worse...has to be lived in.
I've seen the rental units go up...now it's small hotel type things.
None of it involves creating a "living space" with any wow factor.
It is smaller so in theory it "costs less." But I still hold to my view the only safe asset is land. Build a mud hut if you have to.
Land is a safe asset in a nation that has very little respect for property laws? At least with portable wealth you can pick it up and relocate.
Housing activity on the government model is about maintaining the power status quo in the Blue states. The Progressive fascists need to keep the prices high so as to keep themselves, and their structures like Fannie and Freddie, in control. But despite this looting of middle america to try to keep things functional, the housing based economy is o-v-e-r. A thousand years of funny money will not bring back that strange adventure down that cul-de-sac. It is notable that this whipsawing is not so prevalent in what will emerge as the new economy once the Blue states are finally collapsed. It seems providential that it is the saner, still American, states that have the advantages in reality, if not politically. Another reason why it is vital that South America have its itinerant population moved in for voting purposes.
Who Owns What?
A thought about our new "Mortgage Reality". The USG'ubment now owns almost everything being sold today. I say "owns" because the FOOs have driven the private mortgage market out of business. If the rivets pop out of the economic fuselage, and the whole thing implodes, it will be your friendly FOO who will be the one who tells you she's your landlord, because you couldn't pay your mortgage because you didn't have a job or your money is no longer any good. She's going to tell you "here's the lease, and oh by the way, she'll need a key to the house and no, you can't keep those nasty firearms" or any of those silly "bill of rights" things.
We've set ourselves up for tyranny by how we "buy" our homes, along with everything else we've screwed up! I'm suprised our kids speak to US.
Always remember: FOO = Friend Of Obama
The housing/RE market is so 2006. It never fully corrected from those highs.
Banksters and realtors keep pumping and hoping.
It's still a Bubble I agree. My house is still over 300% higher then 2002. It's not worth more then half theat at most.
I would highly reccomend a sell at 300%
vacation properties are back to bubbly list price levels again. tons of people still stuck with 2nd, 3rd, etc., properties they can't sell or rent and are hemoraging cash even if they don't pay the mortgage. it will end badly, (again).
Funny thing is I just sold my Condo in a short sale last year, come to find out that it was actually marked as a traditional sale. I find it interesting and I belive it is the banks way of trying to get us into another mortgage, which I will not do.
The system is perfectly harmonized not to multiply Boomer wealth and pass it to its gen X offspring to add to its own wealth, but to displace Boomer wealth or move it on a massive inter-generational carousel or bi-polar mechanism, so that wealth will only be passed when Boomers perish, and can not possibly be earned by gen X outside of legacy.
This is why the big money of gen X has been wiped out or decimated, an entire generation of labor sowed and reaped. The best find themselves in dire straits, I know this personally. Next up will be the Boomers themselves, who, pressured by a culture of Eternal Youth, challenged to take magic pills to harden their peckers on-demand, spurred on my the Money Honeys of the world to take on inordinate risks, blinded by will-to-power, to prove its generational supremacy, will commit what remains of equity, savings, and unencumbered wealth to a second home-buying wave, of course financed with low-interest rate mortgages, sso that they will be swallowed whole when interests rates rise overnight, with no leading indicators (or a very long, slow leading indicator), and will descend into the valley of a massive deflationary wave, tearing the very fabric of society along with.
Where will they buy this housing? San Francisico? Manhattan?
Interest rates have never been so low...heating prices have now soared.
That says to me...default.
There are no dollars left.
I would say Florida, the Carolinas, Texas, the Gulf Coast...
Tylers,
Any associated data as to average amount requested under each application?
Watson
I dug me own craphole wit' me bare honds.
>> I dug me own craphole
I didn't go that far but I did renovate a complete disaster mobile into a pretty nice place. It's been taking this old guy about a year and a half of poking at it when I have the energy to renovate a place that most would consider tear downs (or haul-aways in the mobile home world). Works for me. Right now the problem is finding the right disaster property. Two years ago they were a dime a dozen, now rare as hen's teeth.
So, the Fed is producing a nation of renters and rentiers via QE. I am sure that will end well...
FedFUBAR.
CLEARLY smart-n-savvy investors are jumping out of the rigged & risky housing market and into safe venues, like crack & bitcoin.
It would be interesting to see this data as per capita by age group. I fear the worst is yet to come.
The solution is to print more money and drive housing prices higher. This way Jamie can buy another yacht. Looking at house sales is stupid, look at yacht and mansion sales that's where the action is. Who cares if millions are living out of dumpsters they don't go to the same parties as the banksters and the politicians anyway so who's gonna notice?
Realtors are friggin so stupid. Look at the auto industry. They sold TONS of cars and you know how they did it? No, it wasn't funny money from the banks and the government ment to prop up the industry. It wasn't 8 year loans at zero % interest. It wasn't stuffing the pipeline to the point where the dealers were just paving parking lots to park cars. no it wasn't ANY of that. Think what's the first thing you see when you go on a car lot? BALLOONS!! It's balloons you idiots!! I go to a car dealer and the first thing I ask the salesman is, "what kind of cars do you have with a blue balloon?" Balloons you idiots!! Put balloons on those houses and they'll sell like hotcakes!!!
Damn ... that's funny. Coming from a former car dealer.
Its because the economy is so strong that everyone is flush with cash so people are just buying them outright with bernanke bucks.
BULLISH!
I don't see how this is bad. This is good. First of all, Aunt Felda and her dog already have a house each.
Some unemployed people that bought 3/4 million dollar houses are out of them (not that I want someone to lose a house, but one should have some manners in borrowing money to start)
So very few people need fresh mortgages, mostly mortgage mods. Lots of houses were bought with cash as they were too cheap.
Structual situation isa bit different so just pointing at a graph in ZH style "look, a graph!" is meaningless in my opinion.
Chart takeaway is that mean reversion is a reality and we are back to where we started from before the housing market went on steroids. Now you just buy a house you can actually afford. That is a smaller club that that which roamed the earth in 2002-2007.
The only action I'm getting is rentals from the foreclosures. No one can get a mortgage in my area. It's EBT city. Didn't use to be that way. My house is immediately surrounded by 5 foreclosures. No one has jobs, it's quite depressing.
What I see here in SoCal is 50% of purchases are investors paying all cash.
The difference between 2004-2006 and now is, back then it was NINJA (no income no job) loans AND there was no real threat of deflation/hyper-inflation currency issues.
Today investors have no place to park their wealth except in equities and real estate WITH a real threat of deflation/hyper-inflation (and) currency issues.
Prepare as best you can - the writing is on the wall me thinks.
if half of all homes bought CASH (ie no mort ap) then we're actually at ALL TIME HIGHS! GO AMERICA!
http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2013/08/15/report-half-of-all-homes-are-being-purchased-with-cash/