TGIF Real Estate & Mortgage Interest Rate Update

NAR’s 2014 Investment and Vacation Home Buyers Survey,* covering existing- and new-home transactions in 2013, shows vacation-home sales jumped 29.7 percent to an estimated 717,000 last year from 553,000 in 2012. Investment-home sales fell 8.5 percent to an estimated 1.10 million in 2013 from 1.21 million in 2012. Owner-occupied purchases rose 13.1 percent to 3.70 million last year from 3.27 million in 2012. The sales estimates are based on responses from households and exclude institutional investment activity.

Some early rate improvement on the March employment data this morning; non-farm job growth 192K slightly less than the 200K expected, private jobs were expected to be up 210K but reported +192K. The unemployment rate was thought to have declined to 6.6% but was unchanged at 6.7%. We don’t pay a great deal of attention to the unemployment rate, we never have; the rate is too speculative based on how the data is collected. More and more traders and investors are giving less attention. With last month’s increase, total private payrolls reached 116.1 million, surpassing the pre-recession peak.

The overall view of March employment is a little better but there are still not many good jobs out there (good is defined as a job that pays enough to live on). Janet Yellen’s concerns outlined on Monday in her speech in Chicago that the kind of jobs being created are not the kind of jobs that grow the economy, saying that the recovery “still feels like a recession to many Americans.”…. “The numbers of people who have been trying to find work for more than six months or more than a year are much higher today than they ever were since records began decades ago.”  Although today’s report can be considered less than average, the data was good enough to keep the Fed on its tapering path while keeping the Fed on hold in considering increasing interest rates (FF rate).

There is no other economic news today so if you have not already locked your rate then I would suggest floating until next week to gain a few extra days if needed.