I wonder how many will soon find themselves upsidedown on their mortgages??
Prepare yourself: ‘The U.S. housing market is at the beginning stages of the most significant contraction in activity since 2006’ The U.S. housing sector is in the midst of the biggest slowdown in over a decade, one economist says. But don’t expect prices to fall back down to earth just yet.
“The U.S. housing market is at the beginning stages of the most significant contraction in activity since 2006,'” Len Kiefer, deputy chief economist at Freddie Mac FMCC, -4.50%, tweeted.
“It hasn’t shown up in many data series yet, but mortgage applications are pointing to a large decline over summer,” he explained.” He said home-purchase mortgage applications are down 40% from their most recent peak in 2021.
Purchases and refinance applications are in fact down to the lowest level in 22 years.
Mortgage applications as a data point “gives you a sense of where the market might be headed,” Kiefer said in an interview with MarketWatch, “because that’s the early stages of when people are looking to buy a home. And if the volume of applications falls, that tends to indicate that in a month, month and a half, mortgage originations of home closings will also decline.”
Kiefer expects home sales to henceforth “slow quite a bit over the summer.”
Meanwhile, Freddie Mac data released on Thursday morning revealed that mortgage rates have risen, on the back of rising interest rates and inflation.................
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/prepare-yourself-the-u-s-housing-market-is-at-the-beginning-stages-of-the-most-significant-contraction-in-activity-since-2006-11654806265?mod=home-page
