Silicon Valley Real Estate Market Trend Report:

December 27, 2024 — We’re at the end of a year again already, something that only seems to occur more quickly with the passage of time. At this time of year, it’s commonplace to take time to reflect on what was and contemplate what may be, always hoping for better than what came before.

It may not seem much like it, but for mortgage rates, things were sort of better this year than last. While 30-year fixed mortgage rates posted nearly identical bottoms (6.08% in 2024, 6.09% in 2023) the peaks were certainly different, as were the conditions that got them there. The high water mark for 2024 of 7.22% was significantly lower than 2023’s 20+ year high of 7.79%, but both years’ peak rates were more than sufficiently high to quash both home sales and refinancing.

That said, the pattern certainly changed. In 2023, rates essentially started low and mostly rose through the entire year; last year, it’s been a bit more roller coaster-ish — generally rising for four months, falling for five, then rising again for three. The latest three months of increases (October through now) have come despite the Fed slashing short-term rates by a full percentage point in just three months’ time. This again underscores how mortgage rates don’t follow what the Fed does with policy rates, at least in any immediate fashion. Investor concerns about stubborn inflation have caused mortgage rates to firm over this time, and we’ll need to see price pressures subside further in order to have mortgage rates trend lower.

Mortgage rates are often described as a “spread” product, although more accurately it is Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) that are. That said, the description is fair enough in that a relationship against other financial instruments can be regularly observed. For mortgage rates, the yield on the low-risk 10-year Treasury is a good proxy for movements, and for a long run of history, the average rate for a conforming 30-year fixed rate was commonly found 150-180 basis points above this yield. In turbulent times for the economy or housing, this spread balloons, as it takes much higher returns to get investors to buy MBS at a time when identifiable risks are rising or high. These spreads can be and have been narrowed appreciably at times when a large buyer steps in, as the Fed did after the financial crisis and again when the pandemic upended the economy.

With this in mind, and as you might expect, spreads widened appreciably after the Fed stepped away from buying MBS, and most especially since they began the process of reducing their mortgage holding. So far, this has been occurring at a glacial pace, as refinancing activity has been very subdued for several years, and was recently pegged at levels last seen nearly 30 years ago. The slow drip of principal repayment by homeowners whose mortgages make up the securities the Fed holds is essentially the only way reductions of mortgage holdings are happening in the Fed’s balance sheet.

Home sales have also been very sluggish for some time, issuance of new MBS for investors to absorb has also been low. It may just be that the current level of new MBS is at or perhaps even below the level the market collectively can handle, and that demand for product is meeting or perhaps exceeding present supply. While there are likely other factors at work, it’s a good a reason as any to explain why spreads have generally been declining in recent months. In fact, the spread differential in the week ending December 20 was just 224 basis points, the narrowest gap since mid-June 2022, probably not coincidentally the first month where the Fed began actively reducing its mortgage holdings.

After fall storms in the south and southeast crushed activity in October, sales of new homes perked up a little bit in November. The month saw a 5.9% increase in sales to a 664,000 level, and October’s figure was revised upward by 17K to a 627,000 annualized pace. Even with the lift in sales, builders put more homes on the market; the 490,000 (annualized) homes available for purchase is the highest figure in about 17 years, and represents 8.9 months of supply at the current rate of sale. Builders are helping to move homes by offering financing incentives or concession on price, and the $402,600 median sales price for a newly-constructed home is the least expensive it as been since February 2022. Sellers of existing homes are of course much more sticky when it comes to cutting sale prices, and new homes are competing very effectively on price compared to existing homes, even with typical seasonal price softening.