FHFA Monthly Home Prices: November 2010

Today, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) released the latest results of their monthly house price index (HPI) showing that, nationally, home prices were flat at 0.06% since October but dropped a notable 4.42% below the level seen in November 2009.

The FHFA monthly HPI are formulated from home purchase information collected from mortgages that have been sold to or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

S&P/Case-Shiller: November 2010

Today’s release of the S&P/Case-Shiller (CSI) home price indices for November (browse the dashboard) reported that the non-seasonally adjusted Composite-10 price index declined a notable 0.79% since October indicating that housing is continuing to remain weak.

It's important to recognize that as we continue to move away from the government's tax sham, the home sales and price movement fueled by that epic monstrosity are left further and further behind.

Yet, it will be some time before the effects are completely expunged from the CSI as its methodology uses a three month rolling average of the source data and further, as BostonBubble points out, since Congress moved to extend the closing deadline for the credit until September, the CSI data may not be free of the distortion until the February 2011 release!

In any event, you can see from the latest CSI data that the price trends are starting to slump and, as I recently pointed out, the more timely and less distorted Radar Logic RPX data is already capturing notable price weakness nationwide.

Further, both composite indices are now showing notable year-over-year declines, the first such annual declines registered in ten months, a weak sign indeed.

The 10-city composite index declined 0.41% as compared to November 2009 while the 20-city composite declined 1.59% over the same period.

Topping the list of regional peak decliners was Las Vegas at -57.16%, Phoenix at -53.90%, Miami at -48.80%, Detroit at -47.06% and Tampa at -43.70%.

Additionally, both of the broad composite indices show significant peak declines slumping -30.32% for the 10-city national index and -30.35% for the 20-city national index on a peak comparison basis.

To better visualize today’s results use Blytic.com to view the full release.

Also, follow the S&P/Case-Shiller dashboard.

The following chart (click for larger version) shows the percent change to single family home prices given by the Case-Shiller Indices as compared to each metros respective price peak set between 2005 and 2007.

The following chart (click for larger version) shows the percent change to single family home prices given by the Case-Shiller Indices as on a year-over-year basis.

The following chart (click for larger version) shows the percent change to single family home prices given by the Case-Shiller Indices as on a month-to-month basis.

Additionally, in order to add some historical context to the perspective, I updated my “then and now” CSI charts that compare our current circumstances to the data seen during 90s housing decline.

To create the following annual charts I simply aligned the CSI data from the last month of positive year-over-year gains for both the current decline and the 90s housing bust and plotted the data with side-by-side columns (click for larger version).


The “peak” chart compares the percentage change, comparing monthly CSI values to the peak value seen just prior to the first declining month all the way through the downturn and the full recovery of home prices.

More Pain, Less Gain: S&P/Case-Shiller Preview for November 2010

As I demonstrated in prior posts, given their strong correlation, the home price indices provided daily by Radar Logic, averaged monthly, can effectively be used as a preview of the monthly S&P/Case-Shiller home price indices.

The current Radar Logic 25 MSA Composite data reported on residential real estate transactions (condos, multi and single family homes) that settled as late as November 22 and averaged for the month indicates that in the wake of the expiration of the government's final housing tax gimmick prices remain sluggish going flat since October and declining 2.14% below the level seen in November 2009.

The latest daily RPX data is indicating that the price decline picked up steam throughout November and is currently down roughly 2.25% on a year-over-year basis.

This trend is likely telling us that as transactions collapse down to the weak "organic" level post-housing tax scam, prices will follow.

Look for tomorrow's S&P/Case-Shiller home price report to reflect an equivalent declining-to-flattening trend for prices as the source data moves further through months affected by the tax credit activity and into reality.

Commercial Cataclysm!: Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Price Index November 2010

The latest release of the Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Index showed another notable monthly increase of 0.6% since October suggesting that the nation’s commercial property markets are continuing to slump through a tremendous downturn that has seen prices down some 38.54% since the peak set in October 2007.

It's important to note that while the commercial property markets have seen significant downward price movement, the latest data-point marks the third consecutive year-over-year gain.

The Moody’s/REAL CPPI data series is produced by the MIT/CRE but is noted to be “complimentary” to their alternative transaction based index (TBI) as it is published monthly and is formulated from a completely different dataset supplied by Real Capital Analytics, Inc and Real Estate Analytics LLC.

Recession Redux?: January 2011

With much of the econ-finance talk these days still centered around the possibility of a looming “double-dip” let’s take a closer look at two particularly sensitive and accurate leading indicators of our economic health to see if we can tease out the future trends.

First, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is known to use the yield curve (or more specifically the spread between the 10 year and the 3 month treasury yields) to calculate a probability of recession.

This method appears to have been spearheaded by Professor Arturo Estrella of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Professor Frederic Mishkin of the Columbia Business School as outlined in the June 1996 issue of Current Issues in Economic and Finance, a journal published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The yield curve probability method is said to have a nearly perfect track record at predicting recessions some two to six quarters ahead with only one false positive, a period in 1967 that many economists, most notably the late Milton Friedman, considered to have been a credit crunch/mini-recession even though the NBER does not officially recognize it as such.

Another important leading indicator with a solid track record is the Economic Cycle Research Institutes (ECRI) weekly leading indicator (WLI).

When the growth component of the WLI turns strongly negative (< -6) it generally means a notable slowdown or recession is in the offing. So what are these two important indicators saying about our current economic situation? The yield curve spread indicator is indicating that the probability of recession is nearly zero while the ECRI leading index is showing some strengthening signs with the growth component currently at a tepid level of 4.1.

Existing Home Sales Report: December 2010

Today, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) released their Existing Home Sales Report for December showing a continued increase in sales coming in the wake of the now obviously phony baloney government tax gimmick sponsored surge in home sales activity seen earlier in 2010 and 2009.

Single family home sales increased 11.8% since November but remained 2.5% below the level seen last year while prices declined 0.2% since November and fell 0.18% below the level seen in December 2009.

Further, inventory remains high climbing 9.4% above the level seen in December 2009 which, combined with the relatively slow pace of sales, resulted in a monthly supply of 7.8.

The following charts (click for full-screen dynamic version) shows national existing single family home sales, median home prices, inventory and months of supply since 2005.

Extended Unemployment: Initial, Continued and Extended Unemployment Claims January 20 2011

Today’s jobless claims report showed a notable decline to both initial unemployment claims and a continued unemployment claims as a declining trend continued to shape up for both initial and traditional continued claims.

Seasonally adjusted “initial” unemployment declined by a whopping 37,000 to 404,000 claims from last week’s revised 441,000 claims while seasonally adjusted “continued” claims declined by 26,000 resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 3.1%.

Since the middle of 2008 though, two federal government sponsored “extended” unemployment benefit programs (the “extended benefits” and “EUC 2008” from recent legislation) have been picking up claimants that have fallen off of the traditional unemployment benefits rolls.

Currently there are some 4.67 million people receiving federal “extended” unemployment benefits.

Taken together with the latest 4.77 million people that are currently counted as receiving traditional continued unemployment benefits, there are 9.45 million people on state and federal unemployment rolls.

The following chart shows the recent trend in initial non-seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims with the year-over-year percent change acting as a rough equivalent of a seasonally adjustment.

Historically, unemployment claims both “initial” and “continued” (ongoing claims) are a good leading indicator of the unemployment rate and inevitably the overall state of the economy.

The following chart shows “population adjusted” continued claims (ratio of unemployment claims to the non-institutional population) and the unemployment rate since 1967.

Adjusting for the general increase in population tames the continued claims spike down a bit.

The following chart (click for larger version) shows “initial” and “continued” claims, averaged monthly, overlaid with U.S. recessions since 1967.

Also, acceleration and deceleration of unemployment claims has generally preceded comparable movements to the unemployment rate by 3 – 8 months (click for larger version).

New Residential Construction Report: December 2010

Today’s New Residential Construction Report showed a notable gain for single family permits and a notable decline for single family starts which, considering the truly depressed level of new home construction activity, appears to suggest that housing is continuing to remain historically weak.

Single family housing permits, the most leading of indicators, increased 5.5% on a month-to-month basis to 440K single family units (SAAR) but declined a notable 14.9% below the level seen in December 2009 and an astonishing 75.53% below the peak in September 2005.

Single family housing starts declined 9.0% to 417K (SAAR) units dropping 14.2% below the level seen in December 2009 and a whopping 77.13% below the peak set in early 2006.

With the substantial headwinds of rising unemployment, epic levels of foreclosure and delinquency, mounting bankruptcies, contracting consumer credit, and falling real wages, an overhang of inventory and still falling home prices, the environment for “organic” home sales remains weak and likely very fragile.

Reading Rates: MBA Application Survey – January 19 2011

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) publishes the results of a weekly applications survey that covers roughly 50 percent of all residential mortgage originations and tracks the average interest rate for 30 year and 15 year fixed rate mortgages, 1 year ARMs as well as application volume for both purchase and refinance applications.

The purchase application index has been highlighted as a particularly important data series as it very broadly captures the demand side of residential real estate for both new and existing home purchases.

The latest data is showing that the average rate for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage declined 1 basis point to 4.77% since last week while the purchase application volume declined 1.9% and the refinance application volume increased 7.7% over the same period.

It's important to note that rates have been, more or less, trending up for about twelve weeks now and coincidentally somewhat in-line with the Fed making QE2 official.

While early scuttlebutt about QE2 measures worked to depress mortgage rates earlier this year, it appears that the actual implementation of the measures is not currently working to force them down any lower resulting in continued poor trends for purchase and refinance activity.

The purchase application volume remains near the lowest level seen in well over a decade while refinance activity continues to slow.

Could the Fed have reached a limit on the long end of the rate curve? We will have to wait to find out.

The following chart shows the average interest rate for 30 year and 15 year fixed rate mortgages as well as one year ARMs since 2006 (click for larger dynamic full-screen version).

The following dynamic charts show the Purchase Index, Refinance Index and Market Composite Index since 2006 (click for larger versions).

The New “Household” Misery Index: November 2010

Back in the 1970s and 80s the “Misery Index” was popularized as a measure that accurately captured the misery and malaise of the time.

The original Misery Index was a bit too simplistic as it only captured the severity of the two main vexing issues of the time, unemployment and inflation.

Today, inflation, as measured by the annual rate of change of the CPI-U, is not a significant source of financial misery.

Of course, households on fixed income may dispute that fact and many have argued that CPI itself does not accurately capture “real” inflation as it has never accounted for the ridiculous increasing costs of housing and other essentials so for the sake of formulating a new misery index, inflation will factored out.

Another key to formulating a new misery index is to specifically target “household” misery as opposed to including data that might target the miserable state of affairs of the federal government or corporate misery.

The Household Misery Index captures the following trends and weights them equally:

1. The U-3 unemployment rate
2. YOY percent change of the 10-Year moving average of total nonfarm payrolls
3. YOY percent change of the 10-Year moving average of “real” personal income
4. YOY percent change of the 10-year moving average of “real” S&P 500

The unemployment rate captures the misery associated to the threat and severity of a potential bout of unemployment while the annual change of the 10 year moving average of non-farm payrolls captures a more fundamental sense of the overall job market.

The annual change to the 10 year moving average of “real” (adjusted with CPI-U) personal income captures a household’s long term sense of income prospects.

The annual change to the 10 year moving average of “real” (adjusted with CPI-U) S&P 500 captures a household’s long term sense of typical investment prospects.

Unfortunately, all home price series are simply not long enough to include in the formulation but there may be alternative measures that can be included in the future.

The level of misery increased 0.01% in November and remained near the peak for this cycle and nearly the highest level seen in 30 years while on a year-over-year basis, misery climbed 0.06%.