Spring is off to a roaring start, and along with it are changes to the market, including the latest mortgage rates, housing inventory, and the hottest housing markets.
This week, unemployment edged higher, even as companies still added workers to payrolls. Importantly, wages rose by 4%—high enough to propel real wage growth but not so high as to raise inflation concerns.
It’s worth noting that data for the jobs report was collected in mid-February, when stocks were near all-time highs. The drop in financial markets since then signals investor concerns over future growth, some of which may be driven by an uptick in policy uncertainty.
One upside of the uncertainty is that it has increased interest in safe haven investments. Earlier this week, the 10-year yield was down more than 60 basis points from its January peak.
Mirroring this move, mortgage rates dropped for a seventh straight week, to 6.63%, a welcome move as homebuying season approaches.
In the housing market, Realtor.com® weekly housing inventory showed that new-listings growth was too modest to power acceleration in inventory growth, which registered just below last week’s pace.
On the plus side, buyers still have substantially more homes to choose from compared with last year. Prices have trended relatively flat as homes are taking longer to sell.
As a follow-up to the Realtor.com February Housing Trends report that looked at government layoffs and housing, we’ve added weekly housing metrics tracking for the five major metros where federal government employees are a large share of the workforce.
As of this week, there is still no evidence of a slowdown in these markets. It’s also worth noting that in late 2024, these areas had lower unemployment rates than most other markets.
In the February Hottest Housing Markets report, Hartford, CT, edged Manchester, NH, out of the No. 1 spot. Despite the drama at the top, there’s a lot of stability on the list, which continues to be dominated by Northeast and Midwest markets.
As senior economic research analyst Hannah Jones noted in the report, one of the hallmarks of these in-demand markets is that sellers are in a good position, and we see fewer price cuts in several of them.