At the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter this week: Click on graph for larger image. Part 1: Current State of the Housing Market; Overview for mid-May 2025 ICE Mortgage Monitor: Home Prices Continue to Cool 1st Look at Local Housing Markets in April Asking Rents Mostly Unchanged Year-over-year

The key reports this week are April CPI, Retail Sales and Housing Starts. ----- Monday, May 12th ----- 2:00 PM: Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices for April. ----- Tuesday, May 13th ----- 6:00 AM ET: NFIB Small Business Optimism Index for April. Consumer Price Index for April from the BLS. The consensus is for 0.3% increase in CPI (up 2.4% YoY), and a 0.3% increase in core CPI (up 2.8% YoY). Q1 Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit ----- Wednesday, May 14th ----- 7:00 AM ET: The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) will release the results for the mortgage purchase applications index. ----- Thursday, May 15th ----- 8:30 AM: The initial weekly unemployment claims report will be released. The consensus is for initial claims of 230 thousand, up from 228 thousand last week. 8:30 AM ET: Retail sales for April are scheduled to be released.  The consensus is for 0.1% increase in retail sales. Producer Price Index for April from the BLS. The consensus is for a 0.3% increase in PPI, and a 0.3% increase in core PPI. Empire State manufacturing survey for May. The consensus is for a reading of -7.1, up from -8.1. Philly Fed manufacturing survey for May. The consensus is for a reading of -8.5, up from -26.4. Speech, Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Framework Review, At the Thomas Laubach Research Conference, Washington, D.C. 9:15 AM: The Fed will release Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization for April. NAHB homebuilder survey. The consensus is for a reading of 40 up from 39 last month.  Any number below 50 indicates that more builders view sales conditions as poor than good. ----- Friday, May 16th ----- 8:30 AM ET: Housing Starts for April. University of Michigan's Consumer sentiment index (Preliminary for May).

Note: Mortgage rates are from MortgageNewsDaily.com and are for top tier scenarios. For deaths, I'm currently using 4 weeks ago for "now", since the most recent three weeks will be revised significantly. Note: "Effective May 1, 2024, hospitals are no longer required to report COVID-19 hospital admissions, hospital capacity, or hospital occupancy data."  So, I'm no longer tracking hospitalizations. COVID Metrics  NowWeek AgoGoal Deaths per Week337✅393≤3501 1my goals to stop weekly posts. 🚩 Increasing number weekly for Deaths. ✅ Goal met. Click on graph for larger image. This graph shows the weekly (columns) number of deaths reported since Jan 2023. Although weekly deaths met the original goal to stop posting in June 2023 (low of 314 deaths), I've continued to post since deaths were above the goal again - and I'll continue to post until weekly deaths are once again below the goal for several weeks. Weekly deaths are steadily decreasing following the winter pickup and are nearing the lows of last June. And here is a graph I'm following concerning COVID in wastewater as of May 8th: This appears to be a leading indicator for COVID hospitalizations and deaths.  This is moving towards the lows last May. Nationally COVID in wastewater is "Low".

Plenty of data next week!  Note that the Blue Chip consensus is wide - and currently around 1%. The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2025 is 2.3 percent on May 8, up from 2.2 percent on May 6. After this morning’s wholesale trade report from the US Census Bureau, the nowcast of the contribution of inventory investment to annualized second-quarter real GDP growth increased from -0.46 percentage points to -0.43 percentage points. [May 8th estimate]

Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: Part 1: Current State of the Housing Market; Overview for mid-May 2025 A brief excerpt: This 2-part overview for mid-May provides a snapshot of the current housing market. reported that there were “more than 1 million homes for sale last week, crossing this threshold for the first time since December 2019”. Since inventory has increased sharply and sales are flat, a key for house prices is to watch months-of-supply. The following graph shows months-of-supply since 2017 using data from the NAR. Note that months-of-supply is higher than the previous 8 years! Months-of-supply was at 4.0 months in March compared to 3.8 months in March 2019. There is much more in the article.