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Why Is The Fed Protecting The Stock Market?

By |2018-05-12T00:51:24+00:00February 17th, 2018|Denton County Real Estate, DFW Real Estate, Housing Policy, In the Press, Markets, Mortgage Rates, Politics, Regulation, Spin Cycle, Texas Real Estate|

The $11 billion increase in the System Open Market Account Holdings report for February 14 has caught the attention of a number of intelligent market watchers for obvious reasons. The Federal Reserve is purportedly in the midst of a significant balance sheet normalization process whereby they are (and plan to to continue) selling large amounts of Treasuries and agency mortgage-backed securities. After amassing a portfolio of over $4.4 trillion, the Fed has used that massive hedge fund to artificially suppress interest rates and foster some serious asset inflation. The Fed was not alone in this [...]

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Denton County New Home Prices Jump 10% In January

By |2018-05-12T00:51:53+00:00February 16th, 2018|Denton County Home Prices, Denton County New Homes, Denton County Real Estate, DFW Home Prices, DFW Real Estate, Economy, Mortgage Rates, New Home Sales, Texas Real Estate|

Denton County new home prices jumped to a new high in January. According to NTREIS data the price of closed new construction within Denton County Texas was 10.2 percent higher year-over-year with the average price per square foot of a new Denton County home hitting $151. The total price of a new home was up 11 percent to $436,571. These are some impressive price increases particularly for what is normally a slower part of the selling season. December was a banner month for new home sales throughout the DFW area, and January looks to be [...]

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Denton County Home Sales, Prices Push Higher In January

By |2018-02-10T22:02:47+00:00February 10th, 2018|Denton County Home Prices, Denton County Real Estate, Denton Tx Home Prices, Denton TX Homes For Sale, DFW Home Prices, DFW Homes For Sale, DFW Real Estate, Housing Market, Mortgage Rates|

Denton County home sales pushed higher in January along with average prices. Closed home sales in Denton County rose about 4 percent compared to last year while the average price of a Denton County home was roughly 7 percent higher than this time a year ago. Pending sales were off about 5% in January and the number of homes available on the market was roughly 11 percent higher year-over-year. Denton County months of supply is still less than two months at 1.9. The City of Denton saw even stronger activity during January. The average price [...]

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DC’s Fiscal Lunacy, Fed’s Unwind Creating Waves For Housing Market

By |2018-09-08T15:50:43+00:00February 8th, 2018|Denton County Real Estate, DFW Real Estate, Economy, Housing Market, In the Press, Markets, Mortgage Rates, Mortgages, Politics, Real Estate, Spin Cycle, Texas Real Estate|

The fiscal lunacy in Washington and the Federal Reserve's balance sheet unwind are creating waves for the housing market. 2018 was starting off on the right foot with a noticeable, yet moderate rise in bond yields. As we received more concrete evidence that the Federal Reserve was actually unwinding some of that gigantic balance sheet, volatility erupted pretty quickly. After a 12oo point plunge in the Dow, some savvy mortgage borrowers probably took advantage of the temporary fear in the market to score a decent mortgage rate. It was a small window of opportunity, because [...]

SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket Launches Red Tesla Roadster Into Space

By |2018-02-07T19:20:55+00:00February 7th, 2018|Cool Stuff, Transportation, Video|

Elon Musk's SpaceX made a successful launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket, the world's most powerful rocket by a factor of two, headed on a deep space mission towards Mars. The Falcon Heavy rocket was the first launch of its kind since the Saturn V and the Apollo missions. The successful launch included at least two of the 3 reusable rockets boosters returning to Earth. As icing on the cake, there is now a cherry red Tesla roadster convertible hurtling through space. This animation of the Falcon Heavy Rocket demonstrates how the most powerful rocket [...]

Quicken Loans Overtakes Wells Fargo As Largest Mortgage Lender

By |2018-02-05T17:52:05+00:00February 5th, 2018|Denton County Real Estate, DFW Real Estate, Mortgage Rates, Mortgages, Texas Real Estate, Video|

Quicken Loans overtook Wells Fargo as the largest mortgage lender in the U.S. during the fourth quarter of 2017. Quicken Loans, with their Rocket Mortgage platform, reportedly originated $25 billion in home loans in the last three months of 2017. Wells Fargo was second with $23 billion, followed by Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase at $13 billion and $11 billion respectively. In case you missed it, here's the Rocket Mortgage ad aired during the Super Bowl... 2018 was poised to be a decent year for mortgage lenders, but likely not for Wells Fargo. Serial [...]

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Fed Unwinds $21 Billion, Markets Puke On Higher Yields

By |2018-05-12T00:52:47+00:00February 2nd, 2018|Collin County Home Prices, Dallas Tx Home Prices, Denton County Home Prices, Denton County Real Estate, Denton Tx Home Prices, DFW Home Prices, DFW Real Estate, Economy, Education, Housing Market, In the Press, Mortgage Rates, Politics, Regulation, Texas Employment|

The Federal Reserve System Open Market Account Holdings (SOMA) report for January 31st finally revealed the balance sheet unwind in action. Since the Fed announced their balance sheet unwind last year, the actual process had been proceeding at a snails pace, particularly with the mortgage-backed securities portfolio. The MBS instruments can take 2-3 months to roll off, so the MBS unwind has been virtually invisible until this week. With a $21 billion drawdown in the latest week, including over $10 billion in agency MBS unwind, it becomes increasingly clear why the markets were puking all [...]

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Federal Reserve Sowed The Seeds Of The Next Housing Downturn

By |2019-04-12T16:19:09+00:00January 30th, 2018|Collin County Home Prices, Dallas Tx Home Prices, Denton County Home Prices, Denton County Real Estate, Denton Tx Home Prices, DFW Home Prices, DFW Real Estate, Economy, Housing Market, Mortgage Rates, Spin Cycle, Texas Real Estate|

The Federal Reserve is poised to cause yet another housing downturn in the U.S. I'm not talking about a spectacular Lehman style apocalypse mind you, but an honest downturn that will be unavoidable. Today's S&P Case-Shiller home price index showed another rise in Dallas home prices in November. This is essentially lagged data confirming what most prospective DFW home buyers already knew, namely that Dallas area home prices are pretty damn high. The national index showed that U.S. home prices were up 6.2 percent, or roughly three times average U.S. hourly income growth. The BEA [...]

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Fed Adds $705 Million Agency MBS With Un-Unwind

By |2018-01-26T16:14:43+00:00January 26th, 2018|DFW Real Estate, Economy, Housing Market, Housing Policy, In the Press, Mortgage Rates, New Home Sales, Real Estate, Spin Cycle, Texas Real Estate|

The Federal Reserve's balance sheet unwind was MIA again this week as agency MBS increased with latest System Open Market Account Account Holdings report. SOMA January 24 holdings reflected a magical $705 million INCREASE in agency mortgage-backed securities. This is rather strange behavior indeed for what was advertised as a balance sheet "unwind". It's looking more like the un-unwind, at least for the past two weeks. Much like the crony capitalist elite dining in Davos, the fine purveyors of bogus economic theory inhabiting the halls of the Marriner Eccles building are probably a tad bit [...]

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New Home Sales Get Reality Check In December As Median Prices Hit Record High

By |2019-02-06T01:43:16+00:00January 25th, 2018|Dallas Tx Home Prices, Denton County Home Prices, Denton County New Homes, Denton County Real Estate, Denton TX Homes For Sale, Denton Tx New Homes, DFW Home Prices, DFW New Homes, DFW Real Estate, Economy, Existing Home Sales, Housing Market, New Home Sales, Real Estate, Relocation|

Following yesterday's relatively weak existing home sales numbers from NAR, December new home sales posted at at seasonally adjusted annual rate of 625,000. That was a 9 percent drop from the euphoric November new home sales numbers, which were revised sharply lower along with October numbers. The median price of a new home in the U.S. hit a new high of $335,400 while the average price rose to $398,900. Existing home sales continue to suffer from an acute shortage of inventory and inflated prices. New home sales, while still growing, are even more expensive compared [...]

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