Good Tuesday AM, from your Hometown Lender,

I like quiet weeks.

I say that until we have too many of them (summer is notorious for it) and pricing leaks worse as traders get bored… This is only day two of week one for slowness, so I am enjoying it a bit especially as markets seem to be improving on follow through from last week’s jobs data and the neutral commentary from Chairman Powell. Next week will not be so quiet with lots of inflation data but that is then not now. There is not a lot of data so I thought I would share some notes from around the industry…

Homeowners with mortgages closed out the first quarter of 2024 with just a hair under $17T in home equity – an all-time high. Of that, a record $11T is tappable, meaning available for a homeowner to leverage while retaining a 20% equity cushion in the property.

On average, that works out to roughly $206K in tappable equity per mortgage holder.

Renters are feeling more pessimistic than ever. A New York Federal Reserve study released Monday showed the share of renters as of February who have hope that they will ever buy a home fell to a record low of 13.4% for 2024. That’s down from 15% in 2023 and significantly lower than the 20.8% series high back in 2014. The news comes as mortgage rates remain high and there’s been little improvement in housing affordability. Continuing their pessimism, respondents also expect rental costs to increase by 9.7% over the next year.

One third of all available homes are new construction which is far greater than the typical 12%. That said, the US is still short of 6.5 million single-family homes compared to the number of families starting new households, Realtor.com found.

And this one was surprising to me…

To become an economic powerhouse like China, India urgently needs to address rising income inequality. The income share of India’s top 1% stood at 22.6% in 2022, among the highest in the world, but look at South Africa. I had no clue.

Stay safe, make today great!