Housing Is Collapsing & Wall Street Doesn't Even Notice
Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance
The cracks in the U.S. housing market are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
Over the past 48 hours, we’ve received a series of housing reports that paint a troubling picture of an economy struggling under the weight of elevated rates, as I have been predicting would happen.
And perhaps most concerning, this deterioration is taking place just as the Federal Reserve contemplates additional tightening. I wanted to take this morning to review the latest data and explain what implications this could eventually have for the market.
Pending home sales plunged 7.3% in September, dramatically worse than economists expected, pushing contract signings to their lowest level since records began in 2001.
According to ZeroHedge, the deterioration was widespread across the country, with pending sales falling 9.2% in the West, 8.2% in the South, 6.5% in the Midwest, and 4.2% in the Northeast. Every major region experienced a decline, suggesting that the weakness is not confined to a handful of overheated housing markets.
More importantly, pending sales typically lead completed transactions by one to two months, meaning September’s collapse could translate into additional weakness in existing home sales over the coming months.
Housing starts also fell 5.2%, while single-family building permits declined 4% to their lowest level since 2023. The weakness has carried into October, with mortgage purchase applications falling sharply and refinancing activity remaining deeply depressed
The numbers represent a broad deterioration across multiple parts of the housing market, from prospective buyers and existing homeowners to builders and lenders. What makes the latest figures particularly revealing is that mortgage rates actually declined last week, from 7.50% to 7.41%, yet demand continued to weaken. Even a modest reprieve in borrowing costs wasn’t enough to bring buyers back.
At this point, the problem isn’t simply whether rates are rising or falling from one week to the next. It’s the...(READ THIS FULL ARTICLE 100% FREE HERE).