San Francisco Real Estate - Residential

Weekly Mortgage Update - Last Week in Review

Foster Weeks publishes a weekly mortgage report which is updated every Monday morning. How is this affecting the San Francisco real estate market? Read our weekly and monthly market reports. Here’s what Mr. Weeks says about last week’s activity:

“YOU’RE MOTORING.WHAT’S YOUR PRICE FOR FLIGHT?” 80’s band Night Ranger’s ballad “Sister Christian” perhaps describes the question some spring break travelers are asking travel agents as they reschedule plans to visit Mexico, in light of last week’s sudden swine flu outbreak.

And while the quickly spreading illness has made this Spring’s travel season especially challenging, there are some bright spots on the horizon for the economy.

Last week, the Fed signaled that the recession may be easing, and this news was echoed by the
Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), who also said that the recession would probably end by the time Summer is over. The ECRI, whose leading indicators have a solid track record of predicting turns in the business cycle, said that enough of its key gauges have turned upward to indicate with certainty that a recovery is coming.

The beleaguered auto industry has been big news of late, and while Chrysler struggled to find “Mr. Right” in Fiat, the price for their flight ended up to be bankruptcy.while on the other hand, it looks like Ford will be all right tonight, as their Stock is up big from just one week ago. What’s more, as you can see in the chart below, Stocks in general had a great April. In fact, the S&P 500 had its best month in nine years, gaining 9.4%, led by the financial sector. This is further evidence that the changes in mark-to-market accounting were a great decision.

In addition, there were several good economic reports to note as Consumer Confidence for April came in at its fourth largest gain in the history of the survey, while Consumer Sentiment also came in better than expected. The improvement in the way consumers are feeling is likely influenced by the improvement in Stock prices.

Read the entire report here.

posted by SFResidence.com @ 6:01 PM