Note: Mortgage rates are from MortgageNewsDaily.com and are for top tier scenarios. initial weekly unemployment claims report will be released. The consensus is for 225 initial claims up from 221 thousand last week. Producer Price Index for February from the BLS. The consensus is for a 0.3% increase in PPI, and a 0.3% increase in core PPI. Q4 Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States from the Federal Reserve.

Plus! Crowded Trades; CoreWeave; The Bots; Accounting; Political Meme Stocks

From CoreLogic: CoreLogic: Borrowers Gained Over $280B in Home Equity in 2024 Homeowner Equity Report (HER) for the fourth quarter of 2024. Nationwide, borrower equity increased by $281.9 billion, or 1.7% year-over-year. The report shows that U.S. homeowners with mortgages (which account for roughly 61% of all properties) saw home equity increase by about $4,100 between Q4 2023 and Q4 2024, which is less than the gain of $6,000 in Q3 2023. The states that saw the largest gains were New Jersey ($39,400), Connecticut ($36,300), and Massachusetts ($34,400), while the largest losses were in Hawaii ($-28,700), Florida ($-18,100), and the District of Columbia ($-14,700). From the press release: Home prices continued to be the major driver of equity shifts and markets with declining prices generally saw fallen equity in 2024. In particular, a number of Florida’s markets, including Cape Coral, Sarasota, Lakeland and Tampa have experienced weakening prices over the past year, which led to Florida’s average equity declining by about $18,000 at the end of 2024. Thinking ahead, in light of mass government layoffs in Washington metro region, it is important to note that borrowers in the tri-state area have accumulated between $261,000 (in Maryland), $287,000 (in Virginia) and $353,000 (in Washington DC), in average home equity which will help as a financial buffer but also provide a downpayment in case of a move. This map from CoreLogic shows the average year-over-year change in equity by state.  States with surging inventory - like Florida and Texas - saw declines in equity.

The formerly anti-government bitcoin movement abandons its principles in favor of number-go-up, applauds federal plan to stockpile seized crypto with no clear benefit to national interest

Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: 2nd Look at Local Housing Markets in February A brief excerpt: NOTE: The tables for active listings, new listings and closed sales all include a comparison to February 2019 for each local market (some 2019 data is not available). Here is a look at months-of-supply using NSA sales. Since this is NSA data, it is likely months-of-supply will increase into the Summer. There is much more in the article.