The Week the Headlines and the Numbers Disagreed

This was the week the headlines and the numbers openly disagreed with each other, and it ended with a lesson I want every agent and buyer I know to hear.

Part One: What rates actually did

Monday through Wednesday the daily rate trackers were on a nice run. By Wednesday the 30 year quoted around 6.60 percent, the third straight session of easing, with the 15 year near 6.09. The driver was geopolitical rather than economic. Iran negotiations turned toward reopening the Strait of Hormuz, oil began moving more freely, and a softer inflation outlook pulled the bond market down with it.

Then Thursday morning Freddie Mac published its weekly survey and the 30 year printed at 6.69 percent, up from 6.66. That is the highest reading in about eleven months. The 15 year went the other way, easing to 6.01.

Both things were true at once. The daily indexes drifted down while the weekly survey drifted up, and by Friday the trackers were spread anywhere from 6.58 to 6.71 depending on whose index you read. Thirteen basis points of disagreement is unusually wide.

Mortgage applications fell 2.9 percent for the week ending July 31. The Federal Reserve is holding at 3.50 to 3.75 percent and does not meet again until September 15 and 16.

So here is my honest read. Stop quoting headlines. If you are an agent telling a buyer where rates are, or a buyer deciding when to lock, a national average is not your rate. Ask your lender what your actual file prices at today.

And size the movement honestly. On a $450,000 loan, the week over week move from 6.66 to 6.69 costs about nine dollars a month. Year over year, 6.63 to 6.69, is about eighteen dollars a month. Rates have sat inside a twenty dollar band for a full year while Montgomery County prices rose 4.2 percent. If someone is waiting for rates to rescue them, that math is the answer.

Part Two: The greater Philly picture

No July county release yet, so these are June figures and I'm labeling them as such rather than dressing them up as current.

Montgomery County closed 979 sales, up 10.4 percent year over year, with a $521,000 median, up 4.2 percent, and 1,244 active listings, up 17 percent, at six days on market. Chester County posted 661 closed, a $627,000 median up 4.5 percent, 852 actives up 13.1 percent, also six days. Philadelphia stays the outlier at 1,347 closed, down 5 percent, and nineteen days on market.

That 17 percent jump in Montgomery County inventory is the number I keep circling. Sam Khater at Freddie Mac said the same thing this week, that for sale inventory is improving from the limited supply of recent years.

My own listing alerts backed it up, and the volume climbed every single day. Wednesday brought ten new listings. Thursday brought twenty seven addresses. Friday brought thirty three, the busiest night since I started tracking.

Wednesday and Thursday belonged to the top of the market. Five of Thursday's twelve new listings came in at $800,000 or higher, including one just over $3.2 million in Plymouth Meeting at more than 6,000 square feet. In a county with a $521,000 median, that is heavy.

The regional cuts spread wide, with reductions of roughly $25,000 in Ambler, $20,000 in Norristown, $20,000 in Lansdowne, $15,000 in Bridgeport and $10,000 in Blue Bell. The pattern I keep coming back to is that four separate listings across four towns came on the market and took a price cut in the same week they were listed. Sellers are testing a number, watching the first weekend, and correcting fast.

Part Three: Conshohocken, by the numbers

Six new listings hit the board in Conshy this week, $3,862,900 in fresh inventory, ranging from a $350,000 condo up to $799,000. Four of the six landed Friday alone.

Here is the interesting part. All six priced between $219 and $289 per square foot, with a median of $275. That is a remarkably tight band. Six different sellers, six different agents, and they all landed within seventy dollars a foot of each other.

The cut list tells a different story. Conshy carried seven active price reductions midweek, then contracted to five by Friday as two listings came off the alerts.

Those five carried reductions ranging from 1.0 percent to 5.7 percent off original asking. Together that is $103,500 removed from the market, or 3.53 percent off original asking, with a median cut list price of $565,000, still above the county median.

Now compare the two groups on price per square foot and it sharpens. New listings came in at $219 to $289. The cut list runs $239 to $419, and the two priced highest per square foot, at $398 and $419, are also the two that have cut the least in percentage terms. Those sellers sit furthest from what the market just showed us it will pay, and they have moved the least.

One last number, because it is the one that matters. The deepest reduction on the board lowered that home's monthly principal and interest by about $134. The whole week of rate movement was worth about nine dollars a month on a similar loan.

Price is doing roughly fifteen times the work that rates are. That is the whole week in one sentence.