News you can use Jan 30, 2023 - Boomer Foster

 Hello friends,

I have great news. Boomer Foster, President, General Brokerage at Long & Foster Real Estate does a weekly video of  Real Estate industry news, particularly the financial / market news. In the past, he has mixed that information with in-house news and events, which would be of no interest to the general public. He has now decided to have his video edited so that there is a video suitable to share with you.

Boomer is a straight talker and is interesting to listen to. He has a very high level, but in depth perspective of the market and industry. The videos are generally a short 4-6 minutes. Since I believe these could be very useful to many of you, I am going to try to post them here every week for your edification. 

Here is this weeks video, with a transcript below.

Enjoy.

Transcript:

Good afternoon, everyone! 

Last week was a big one on Wall Street. The Dow, NASDAQ, and S&P were all up due to solid economic growth as well as a better-than-expected GDP from the 4th quarter of last year. The big news that we’re keeping an eye on this week is the Fed’s February meeting and whatever announced raise they have in mind for the Federal Funds rate. Most economists agree that they’ll probably raise it 25 basis points. 30-year fixed rates were down slightly, from 6.15% to 6.13%. The good news about where we are with mortgage rates is that consumers have gotten used to the new normal and, in the grand scheme, rates are lower than historical averages. There’s been a significant change in buyer activity and consumers are back to buying again. The big challenge is still inventory. 

In our industry, we’re starting to see pending sales pick up again, down 18.8% year over year, but up 5.2% week over week. So, we’re beginning to see movement in the right direction. Inventory is up 60% from the same time last year, but only because not as many homes are coming off the market. The big news in our industry is that a federal court ended the DOJ inquiry into the Clear Cooperation policy. The reason that’s big news is that the agreement that was in place under the previous administration is back in effect, which is good news.