Market News

It’s hard to put a positive spin on recent economic and political realities. It’s good news that Powell has signaled that the Fed will hold off on a monthly increase in the Fed rate, but that doesn’t change the basic situation of steadily increasing interest rates.

Here are 3 angles on interest rates over varying periods of time: average daily, average weekly, and jumbo loan rates (all of which use different methodologies in their calculations):

The preliminary October reading for the Consumer Confidence Index was released: Generally speaking, the public is not too happy with economic conditions (especially inflation).

According to NAR, the national percentage of all-cash buyers in September was at its highest point in 8+ years. An increased percentage of total sales does not necessarily mean an increase in the actual number of all-cash buyers. But as a share of the market, all-cash buyers are participating more actively than those requiring loans. I do not have a reliable source of updated local data on all-cash buyers.

NAR released September sales data yesterday. Below is a chart of national single-family home prices since 1990. Though many Bay Area markets have seen strong, sometimes very strong, rebounds in median sales prices in 2023, generally speaking, the overall national market has rebounded closer to 2022 peak house prices.

Presumably because of their relative affordability compared to houses in the urban-region markets in which they are mostly found, the national median condo/co-op sales price is performing even better than the median house sales price, hitting a new peak in June 2023.