Calculated Risk

Tuesday: Retail Sales, Industrial Production, Homebuilder Survey

Mortgage Rates From Matthew Graham at Mortgage News Daily: Mortgage Rates Start Week at Another Long-Term Low
Mortgage rates have done almost nothing but move lower over the past 4 months. The first Fridays in August and September account for about half of the total drop thanks to weaker results in the jobs report.

Since the September 5th jobs report, rates have held a sideways-to-slightly lower range that's resulted in several additional "lowest since" headlines. There's nothing special about today in that regard. Bonds (which dictate rates) happened to improve, so rates inched to another 11+ month low.

Today's levels aren't appreciably different than last Friday's. Volatility is a bigger risk over the next two days thanks to economic data tomorrow morning and the Fed announcement on Wednesday. [30 year fixed 6.25%]
emphasis added
Tuesday:
• At 8:30 AM ET, Retail sales for August will be released.  The consensus is for a 0.3% increase in retail sales.

• At 9:15 AM, The Fed will release Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization for August. The consensus is for no change in Industrial Production, and for Capacity Utilization to decrease to 77.4%.

• At 10:00 AM, The September NAHB homebuilder survey. The consensus is for a reading of 33, up from 32 in August. Any number below 50 indicates that more builders view sales conditions as poor than good.

"A Dirty Little Secret"

With unemployment increasing, but not quite recessionary, I'm reminded of a post I wrote in May 2011: Employment: A dirty little secret
[I]t really isn't much of a secret that Wall Street and corporate America like the unemployment rate to be a little high. But it is "dirty" in the sense that it is unspoken. Higher unemployment keeps wage growth down, and helps with margins and earnings - and higher unemployment also keeps the Fed on the sidelines. Yes, corporations like to see job growth, so people have enough confidence to spend (and they can have a few more customers). And they definitely don't want to see Depression era unemployment - but a slowly declining unemployment rate (even at 9%) with some job growth is considered OK.
And from others, like Kash Mansori, also in 2011: Why a Bad Job Market is Good News for Some
[T]his opens up an interesting line of reasoning, one that is certainly not new but which this data reminds us of. If a bad labor market means that workers get a smaller share of the productivity they bring to their employers, then the owners of companies will have a strong preference for a weak labor market. Firms don't like recessions, of course -- it's hard to make money when your sales are falling. But companies do enjoy the way that a very slow recovery in the job market can allow them to keep wages down, and thus keep a larger share of the output of their workers for themselves.
And from Paul Krugman in 2013: The Plight of the Employed
And may I suggest that employers, although they’ll never say so in public, like this situation? That is, there’s a significant upside to them from the still-weak economy. I don’t think I’d go so far as to say that there’s a deliberate effort to keep the economy weak; but corporate America certainly isn’t feeling much pain, and the plight of workers is actually a plus from their point of view.
Back then we had high, but a slowly declining unemployment rate. Now we have a low but slowly increasing unemployment rate. This is bad news for those losing their jobs, or those looking for jobs, or on the cusp of becoming unemployed. But this is a positive for corporate America (as long as we avoid a recession).

2nd Look at Local Housing Markets in August

Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: 2nd Look at Local Housing Markets in August

A brief excerpt:
Tracking local data gives an early look at what happened the previous month and also reveals regional differences in both sales and inventory.

August sales will be mostly for contracts signed in June and July, and mortgage rates averaged 6.82% in June and 6.72% in July (somewhat lower than for closed sales in July).

Closed Existing Home SalesIn August, sales in these early reporting markets were down 5.0% YoY. Last month, in July, these same markets were up 0.5% year-over-year Not Seasonally Adjusted (NSA).

Important: There were one fewer working days in August 2025 (21) as in August 2024 (22). So, the year-over-year change in the headline SA data will be more than the NSA data (there are other seasonal factors).
...
Many more local markets to come!
There is much more in the article.

Housing September 15th Weekly Update: Inventory Up 1.6% Week-over-week

Altos reports that active single-family inventory was up 1.6% week-over-week.  Inventory usually starts to decline in the fall and then declines sharply during the holiday season.
Inventory is now up 37.8% from the seasonal bottom in January.   Usually, inventory is up about 20.5% from the seasonal low by this week in the year.   So, 2025 saw a larger than normal increase in inventory.
The first graph shows the seasonal pattern for active single-family inventory since 2015.
Altos Year-over-year Home InventoryClick on graph for larger image.

The red line is for 2025.  The black line is for 2019.  
Inventory was up 20.5% compared to the same week in 2024 (last week it was up 20.4%), and down 9.8% compared to the same week in 2019 (last week it was down 10.6%). 
Inventory started 2025 down 22% compared to 2019.  Inventory has closed some of that gap, but it appears inventory will still be below 2019 levels at the end of 2025.
Altos Home InventoryThis second inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research.
As of September 12th, inventory was at 860 thousand (7-day average), compared to 847 thousand the prior week. 
Mike Simonsen discusses this data and much more regularly on YouTube

Sunday Night Futures

Weekend:
Schedule for Week of September 14, 2025

FOMC Preview: 25bps Rate Cut Expected

Monday:
• At 8:30 AM ET, The New York Fed Empire State manufacturing survey for September. The consensus is for a reading of 4.0, down from 11.9.

From CNBC: Pre-Market Data and Bloomberg futures S&P 500 are up 9 and DOW futures are up 82 (fair value).

Oil prices were up over the last week with WTI futures at $62.93 per barrel and Brent at $67.21 per barrel. A year ago, WTI was at $70, and Brent was at $74 - so WTI oil prices are down about 10% year-over-year.

Here is a graph from Gasbuddy.com for nationwide gasoline prices. Nationally prices are at $3.12 per gallon. A year ago, prices were at $3.15 per gallon, so gasoline prices are down $0.03 year-over-year.

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