Author: smarttalksucce

Rising mortgage rates and inflation in the wider economy caused housing demand to drop sharply in June, forcing home prices to cool down.

Home prices are still higher than they were a year ago, but the gains slowed at the fastest pace on record in June, according to Black Knight, a mortgage software, data and analytics firm that began tracking this metric in the early 1970s. The annual rate of price appreciation fell two percentage points from 19.3% to 17.3%.

Price gains are still strong because of an imbalance between supply and demand. The housing market has had a severe shortage for years. Strong demand during the coronavirus pandemic exacerbated it.

Even when home prices crashed dramatically during the recession of 2007-09, the strongest single-month slowdown was 1.19 percentage points. Prices are not expected to fall nationally, given a stronger overall housing market, but higher mortgage rates are certainly taking their toll.

The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage crossed above 6% in June, according to Mortgage News Daily. It has since dropped back into the lower 5% range, but that is still significantly higher than the 3% range rates were in at the start of this year.

“The slowdown was broad-based among the top 50 markets at the metro level, with some areas experiencing even more pronounced cooling,” said Ben Graboske, president of Black Knight Data & Analytics. “In fact, 25% of major U.S. markets saw growth slow by three percentage points in June, with four decelerating by four or more points in that month alone.”

Still, while this was the sharpest cooling on record nationally, the market would have to see six more months of this kind of deceleration for price growth to return to long-run averages, according to Graboske. He calculates that it takes about five months for interest rate impacts to be fully reflected in home prices.

Markets seeing the sharpest drops are those that previously had the highest prices in the nation. Average home values in San Jose, California, have fallen 5.1% in the last two months, the biggest drop of any of the top markets. That chopped $75,000 off the price.

In Seattle, prices are down 3.8% in the past two months, or a $30,000 reduction. San Francisco, San Diego and Denver round out the top five markets with the biggest price reductions.

The cooling in prices coincides with a sharp jump in the supply of homes for sale, up 22% over the last two months, according to Black Knight. Inventory is still, however, 54% lower than 2017-19 levels.

“With a national shortage of more than 700,000 listings, it would take more than a year of such record increases for inventory levels to fully normalize,” said Graboske.

Price drops will not affect the average homeowner as much as they did during the Great Recession, because homeowners today have considerably more equity. Tight underwriting and several years of strong price appreciation caused home equity levels to hit record highs.

Despite that, the strong demand in the market recently could present a problem for some. About 10% of mortgaged properties were purchased in the last year, so price drops could cause some borrowers to edge much lower in their equity positions.

If you’re debating whether or not the U.S. is in a recession, you’re asking the wrong question, according to a top Federal Reserve official.

“Whether we are technically in a recession or not doesn’t change my analysis,” Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “I’m focused on the inflation data. I’m focused on the wage data. And so far, inflation continues to surprise us to the upside. Wages continue to grow.”

Last month, U.S. inflation jumped to a four-decade record high, rising 9.1% from a year ago. At the same time, the labor market remained strong: Nonfarm payrolls increased by 372,000 last month, alongside a low national unemployment rate of 3.6%.

On Thursday, new Labor Department data showed signs of a job market cooldown, with initial jobless claims hitting their highest level since mid-November. Still, Kashkari said, the labor market is “very, very strong.”

“Typically, recessions demonstrate high job losses, high unemployment, those are terrible for American families. And we’re not seeing anything like that,” he said.

The problem, Kashkari said, is that even in a strong job market, inflation is outpacing wage growth — giving many Americans a functional “wage cut” as living costs increase nationwide. Solving that problem by reducing inflation is the Federal Reserve’s top goal right now, he added.

“Whether we are technically in a recession or not doesn’t change the fact that the Federal Reserve has its own work to do, and we are committed to doing it,” Kashkari said.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported on Thursday that the country’s gross domestic product shrunk for the second straight quarter, often a warning sign accompanying economic recessions. For Kashkari, that may actually be a good thing: An economic slowdown could help reduce inflation to the point where it no longer outpaces wage growth.

“We definitely want to see some slowing [of economic growth],” he said. “We don’t want to see the economy overheating. We would love it if we could transition to a sustainable economy without tipping the economy into recession.”

Doing so poses a significant challenge for the Fed. Kashkari acknowledged that economic slowdowns tend to be very difficult to control, “especially if it’s the central bank that’s inducing the slowdown.”

Still, he said, the bank will do whatever is necessary to tame inflation.

“We’re going to do everything we can to avoid a recession, but we are committed to bringing inflation down, and we are going to do what we need to do,” Kashkari said. “We are a long way away from achieving an economy that is back at 2% inflation. And that’s where we need to get to.”