Housing demand rises as inventory falls
Housing demand is up and it's time to track the spring housing data and see what the selling season will bring. As I always stress, we are working from the lowest bar ever with demand, so let's add historical context to the data. But, even with mortgage rates higher this year than last year, demand is rising.
Purchase application data
As we get closer to the end of the first month of 2024, forward-looking purchase application data looks good. Once I make some holiday adjustments, we have eight weeks of a positive trend since mortgage rates fell from the 8% high, and as of now, the slightly higher rates we've seen recently haven't impacted the data just yet. Historically, higher rates negatively impact the weekly purchase application data, and I will look for this over the next few weeks . But it's very early in the seasonal demand timeframe for housing, so we will take it one week at a time. Purchase apps were up 8% week to week and still down 18% year over year. Last year at this time we got a boost in demand with rates heading toward 6%.
Click here to read the complete article and view the graph from Housing Wire