My Mortgage Blog

 had planned to wait until last Friday (Jan. 20) to write the next update. The weekly report on the number of new claims for Unemployment Insurance looked great on Thursday, and the number of applications for New Mortgages looked very good on Wednesday. A good Existing Home Sales Figure for Friday could be a meaningful trifecta of sorts. In fact, I was beginning to wish I could have bet on the three indicators as big winners.

Then the snows came here in the Northwest. Now, it was nothing like the snows of the Midwest and Eastern U.S. We probably saw about a foot and a half on our cars’ rooftops. Pretty minor stuff, comparatively speaking, but in our region, it can really mess up our days. Typically, we lose power and, indeed, nearly 200,000 people had no electricity. The roads are a mess, and we don’t have the equipment to clean them up adequately. Not that many people invest in snow tires for the few days of snow, either.

We live in a heavily wooded community. The trees fill with snow, the branches freeze, and soon there are branches breaking and falling and giant handfuls of snow smashing into anything below them. At night, it sounds like artillery is being fired as the branches crack, and the whumping of the snow on the ground and roof and anything else in its way is unnerving.

Amazingly, we never lost power, though we lived with ominous flickers for several days. What we lost was our provider of Internet, and the telephone land line, and all cable (notably, television and email).

The kids fashioned a snowman whom they named Howard (he now looks like Mr. Pinhead) and created a film festival from our archives of DVDs—Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, etc. We kept a pot of soup on the stove, a home-warming fire in the woodstove and, though we could use our computers for writing, we couldn’t get on the Internet with them. Nor could we send or receive email.

It wasn’t until today (Monday) that I could get on the Internet—but still…not at home. I’m sipping on some coffee at McDonald’s and using their free WiFi. And I’m grateful, though it isn’t easy to work in the midst of excited kids.

The good news—better than most people are allowing it to be—is that Existing Home Sales rose by a strong 5% during the month of December. Pause on that. Housing doesn’t usually have a good month in December. This year, it did—and that’s suggestive of a strengthening market.

Meantime, the supply of homes on the market declined to 6.2 months, and that’s the lowest inventory reading since 2006. No, these are not ho-hum developments!

Thursday, we learned that new claims for Unemployment Insurance dropped by an amazing 50,000. The revised figure for the prior week had been a dismayingly large 402,000—back above that watermark figure of 400,000. For the week ending January 14, the number of new claims fell to 352,000. (That number will be revised, but not enough to erase the wonder of how far it fell.)

And on Wednesday, the composite index for New Mortgage Applications fell by a stunning 23.1%, taken lower primarily by falling interest rates. Do not fail to notice, though, that the purchase money mortgage applications rose by 10.3%--and that was after the prior week’s rise of 8.1%. Good stuff!

Coming up in the next few days…. We’ll have the next Mortgage Applications Survey Wednesday, along with the next Pending Home Sales Index; Thursday, we’ll have the next Jobless Claims figure, plus the New Home Sales Index; and Friday, we’ll have a GDP estimate.

Big week, lots to watch—and the figures we’ll see in the coming days may go far to affirm the advances the recent indicators have been describing. Looks like a recovery, walks like a recovery, quacks like a recovery!