Salient to Investors: Tim Sloan at Wells Fargo said rising mortgage rates won’t slow the housing recovery because new families are being created and homes are still affordable. Read the full article at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-09/wells-fargo-says-rising-rates-won-t-snuff-out-housing-recovery.html Click here to receive free and immediate email alerts of the latest forecasts.
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Caroline Baum writes: The residential real-estate market has just got going and only in the last 2 years has residential investment contributed in any significant way to economic growth. July single-family housing starts of an annual rate of 591,000 is a long way from the peak of 1.8 million
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Brian Jones at Societe Generale said the rate of growth of home prices is certainly slowing, but is still posting respectable year-over-year increases and housing is in good shape. S&P/Case-Shiller say the year-over-year gauge provides better indications of trends in home prices. All 20 cities in the index
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Warren Buffett shares of Wells Fargo for the 9th straight quarter, to Berkshire’s largest holding in a portfolio that includes Coca-Cola, American Express, and IBM. Buffett has not added to American Express and Coca-Cola since the 1990s. Buffett favors making concentrated bets on companies he’s studied for years. Jeff Matthews, author of books
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The S&P 500 is at 15.3 projected earnings, the highest in 3 years. 72 percent of the 449 S&P 500 companies so far reporting have beaten earnings estimates, 56 percent have beaten sales estimates. Rick Fier at Conifer Securities said earnings are pretty much done and tapering is on the way
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The US home ownership rate is 65% versus the record high of 69.2 percent in 2004, and back where it was two decades ago. Anthony Sanders at George Mason University said low down-payment loans coupled with exotic adjustable rate mortgages helped fuel the housing bubble, so do we want to
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: ARM applications in late June rose to the highest level since 2008. loan pay Cameron Findlay at Discover Financial Service said we’ve seen a shift in the way people look at adjustable-rate mortgages: they are still skeptical but the sticker shock of fixed rates is making them
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: A growing number of companies are offering financing to consumers with irregular incomes, damaged credit or past foreclosures as the housing market recovers and rising interest rates drive down demand for refinancing. Keith Gumbinger at HSH.com said at least a few lenders are starting to dig into the nooks and
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Matthew Smith at theinvestar.com writes: We have shifted toward an investor’s market rather than a stock picker’s market. The rise in the 10-year T-yield is not a concern since we are still very near all-time low rates, and 30 to 50-year interest rates do not mirror the recent
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Banks are offering jumbo mortgages – too big for government programs – at rates at or below taxpayer-backed loans, while the extra cost of 30-yr fixed jumbo loans averaged a 6-year low of 0.16 percent in June. Paul Miller at FBR Capital Markets said bigger loans are becoming relatively cheaper
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