Demand for mortgages in the US fell by 9.4% last week, even as mortgage rates fell to 6.8%.
How can mortgage demand be down even as rates are down 130+ basis points from their recent highs?
The answer to this question is that the effective outstanding mortgage rate is 3.7%.
90% of borrowers currently have interest rates below 5%.
Even if mortgage rates fell to 5%, the vast majority of borrowers would still have a financial disincentive to sell.
Particularly as investors accounted for many of the...

- Home prices rose 4.8% nationally in October compared with October 2022, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller home price index.
- That’s a jump from the 4% annual increase in September and marks the strongest annual gain seen in 2023.
- Among the top 20 cities, Detroit reported the largest year-over-year gain in home prices at 8.1% in October.
Home prices rose 4.8% nationally in October com...

The new normal for Commercial Real Estate (CRE):
Properties are selling for less than half of what they were worth just 5 years ago.
A downtown Los Angeles office building that sold for $92.5 million in 2018 just sold for $44.7 million.
2 days ago, the Aon Center, Los Angeles' third largest building, sold for 45% less than its last purchase price in 2014.
All as real estate giants like WeWork file bankruptcy and flood the market with supply.
The strength of housing continues to mask the weakness...