Week in review: August 13 – 17

We apologize for the lack of market and financial news this week. We focused our efforts on a few feature pieces that discussed the “state of the mortgage industry” and profiled the local real estate market. We will recap this work and then update you on the market news/movement over the past five days.

SLO County Real Estate:

• August 14: San Luis Obispo County Median home price up in July
• August 14: City of San Luis Obispo home sales, median sales price up in July 
• August 9: SLO County home prices: highest selling price/listing price ratio in 6 years
• August 2: San Luis Obispo County Real Estate Overview (Part 1)
• August 2: San Luis Obispo County Real Estate Overview (Part 2)

The Mortgage Process Explained

• August 16: Mortgage fees up 30 percent since 2008: Government regulation to blame?
• August 15: How to avoid surprise fees and obtain an accurate APR estimate for your mortgage
• August 13: Collateral damage of government regulation: Wells Fargo and mortgage “hegemony”
• August 10: The Mortgage Broker Fee Agreement explained

Mortgage News

• August 13: “Fiscal cliff”: The long-term outlook for mortgage interest rates
• August 13: Breaking down mortgage delinquencies by loan type
• August 8: Underwater homeowners finding more success with refinance
• August 8: Late mortgage payments at 3-year low

Now on to the market news…

• The Dow ended the week at 13,275.20, which is over 50 points above last Friday’s close. It was a busy week for economic data, and the reports came back mixed.
• July retail sales – rose 0.8 percent after June’s dive. A welcome show of strength.
• July producer price index (PPI) – the measure of inflation rose 0.3 percent from June, and 0.5 percent year-over-year, which is the lowest percentage since October 2009.
• July business inventory/sales – inventory rose 0.1 percent and sales dropped 1.1 percent. The inventory/sales ratio rose to 1.29, highest in 2.5 years, an unwanted number and likely sign that the GDP growth will remain sluggish.
• July consumer price index (cost of living metric and the most followed indicator of inflation) – stayed flat month-over-month and is up 1.7 percent year-over-year. Decline in airfare, vehicle, and transportation prices caused the monthly decline.
• July industrial production – rose 0.6 percent
• The four-week average for weekly jobless claims – fell over 5,000 to 363,750, the lowest since March earlier this year, which was the lowest of the recovery.

Real Estate statistics:

•  Mortgage applications fell last week for both purchase (-2.0 percent) and refinance (-5.0 percent)
• July housing starts declined slightly, but building permits, a better measure of long-term stability, grew 6.8 percent from the previous month.
• Shadow inventory – not so much a problem? The Wall Street Journal Developments blog wrote about the so-called “shadow inventory” of homes in foreclosure or at high risk of entering foreclosure (three months delinquent by some measures) and why this “problem” has been overstated in the media.