Foster Weeks publishes a weekly mortgage report which is updated every Monday morning. How is this affecting the San Francisco real estate market? Read our weekly and monthly market reports. Here’s what Mr. Weeks says about last week’s activity:
“LET’S GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT…” Bonnie Raitt. Better believe that last week’s news gave us plenty to talk about.and even a few things to smile about. Here are the highlights.
You know this newsletter has been talking about the mark-to-market issue for some time now, and everyone was talking last Thursday about the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s (FASB) favorable vote to relax mark-to-market accounting, which will help to unlock the continuing freeze in the credit markets. The big change is to allow financial companies to use alternate models, like cash flow analysis, in valuing their assets. This was great news for the financial markets and our economy at large, as this will help money and credit flow more normally in our economy again.
In fact, since the March 12th Congressional hearing on mark-to-market, Stocks have risen 23% just on the speculation a change could be coming. And just one short day after the FASB mark-to-market ruling, there were stories of banks already saying they may not need to sell assets to raise capital, as they will no longer have to take massive paper losses by pricing their assets to the “fire-sale” comps that were created in some of the illiquid markets. Capital ratios are now more in line for many institutions, which will also help their ability to lend – in turn helping consumers and businesses alike. Yesterday’s ruling is a dramatic step towards unwinding the negative spiral created by mark to market, and in fact, the ruling on mark-to-market accounting could well go down in history as a turning point in the US financial crisis.
Speaking of turning points, while Friday’s Jobs Report certainly had its share of the bad (the economy lost 663,000 jobs in March) and the ugly (there have been 5.1 million jobs lost since the recession began in December of 2007), there was also some good. For the first time in a very long while, there were no downward revisions to a prior month’s reading, as February’s number came back with no change. This, as well the actual job losses for this month being improved from January’s levels, and not much worse than expectations, could mean there is some level of stabilization at hand for the labor market. Something else worth smiling over on the job front was Wednesday’s news that Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an executive outplacement company, found that planned layoffs at US firms fell in March to their lowest levels in six months.
While Stocks were buoyed by the Mark-to-Market announcement and optimism that the G20 meeting in London will lead to an agreement on ways to pull global economies out of the current recession, Bonds were unable to hold onto recent gains. As a result, Bonds and rates ended the week .125-.25 percent worse than where they began.
A BIGGER PAYCHECK IS ALWAYS SOMETHING WORTH SMILING ABOUT.AND THE NEW “MAKING WORK PAY” TAX PROVISION COULD MEAN YOUR PAYCHECK IS GROWING. CHECK OUT THIS WEEK’S MORTGAGE MARKET VIEW FOR THE DETAILS.
Read the entire report here.
SFResidence is part of the TRI Coldwell Banker office at 1699 Van Ness in San Francisco which is one of the premier offices in the City and has the market share numbers to prove it. We have some of the top agents selling real estate in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a result, our office posts some impressive numbers.
