Housing

I have a lot of threads to cover today. So let’s get right into it. New home sales. I want to start in the US first because the macro data backdrop is good. The first piece of data here is actually a bit soft and says that residential…

Yesterday, I saw a couple of stories about a sell off in luxury flats in London. The gist was that luxury homes in central London had corrected as much as 20% in the last year. The decline is severe and Foxtons, the estate agent, has been…

There are no big themes dominating the news today. So it is a perfect time to hit a couple of themes with an economic and market theme approach. Let’s talk banks, Japanese trade, the currency wars and deflation.

Back in 2012, three economists published a paper via the San Francisco Fed that looked at nearly every advanced economy business cycle from 1870 forward with the object of understanding the role of credit in the business cycle. Matthew…

Last week, the ECB announced that it would begin purchasing securities backed by bank lending to households and firms. Whereas markets and the media have generally greeted this announcement with enthusiasm, this column identifies reasons…

Today’s post is a potpourri of events I am seeing from around the world that impinge on macro. Europe. As expected, European consumer price inflation came in at 0.5% following the unexpected dip in German inflation. I believe the ECB will…

Topics for today: Tail risk from Ukraine is increasing, giving rise to investment opportunity Argentina is still a basket case US housing will not add appreciably to a US growth acceleration I think the big news in the markets is…

For years mortgage rates on "jumbo" loans have been higher than for traditional (conforming) mortgages. Since jumbo loans were larger than the upper limit permitted to be packaged and sold to Fannie and Freddie, banks would typically charge…

According to S&P’s Case-Shiler House Price Index, house prices are up on average 12% since 2003. The chart of the path of house prices during that time is below via the New York Times.

Fitch, the ratings agency, has reversed itself on Canada. It now believes that the housing market there is poised for only modest declines at worst. Previously, Fitch had said that Canada’s housing market was well overpriced and that a…