by Calculated Risk on 6/07/2021 04:00:00 PM

Note: This is as of May 30th.

From the MBA: Share of Mortgage Loans in Forbearance Slightly Decreases to 4.18%

The Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) latest Forbearance and Call Volume Survey revealed that the total number of loans now in forbearance decreased by 2 basis points from 4.18% of servicers’ portfolio volume in the prior week to 4.16% as of May 30, 2021. According to MBA’s estimate, 2.1 million homeowners are in forbearance plans.

The share of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans in forbearance decreased 1 basis point to 2.18%. Ginnie Mae loans in forbearance decreased 1 basis points to 5.54%, while the forbearance share for portfolio loans and private-label securities (PLS) decreased 6 basis points to 8.31%. The percentage of loans in forbearance for independent mortgage bank (IMB) servicers decreased 2 basis points to 4.34%, and the percentage of loans in forbearance for depository servicers decreased 1 basis point to 4.33%.

“The share of loans in forbearance declined for the 14th straight week, with small drops across most investor types and all servicer types,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s Senior Vice President and Chief Economist. “Forbearance exits dropped to 6 basis points, the lowest weekly level since mid-February, but new forbearance requests, at 4 basis points, matched the recent weekly low from early May.”

Added Fratantoni, “Although the headline employment growth number for May was lower than many had anticipated, other data show evidence of a strengthening job market. That is good news for homeowners who have been struggling and are looking for work, as more families can regain their incomes and start making their mortgage payments again.”
emphasis added

Click on graph for larger image.

This graph shows the percent of portfolio in forbearance by investor type over time.  Most of the increase was in late March and early April 2020, and has trended down since then.

The MBA notes: "Total weekly forbearance requests as a percent of servicing portfolio volume (#) decreased relative to the prior week: from 0.05% to 0.04%."

by Calculated Risk on 6/07/2021 12:18:00 PM

Black Knight released their Mortgage Monitor report for April today. According to Black Knight, 4.66% of mortgage were delinquent in April, down from 5.02% of mortgages in March, and down from 6.45% in April 2020. Black Knight also reported that 0.29% of mortgages were in the foreclosure process, down from 0.40% a year ago.

This gives a total of 4.95% delinquent or in foreclosure.

Press Release: Black Knight: Persistent Constraints in For-Sale Inventory Drive Home Prices Up a Record-Breaking 14.8% Annually in April, Making Housing Least Affordable Since Late 2018

Today, the Data & Analytics division of Black Knight, Inc. released its latest Mortgage Monitor Report, based upon the company’s industry-leading mortgage, real estate and public records datasets. As constraints in residential for-sale inventory persist, this month’s report looks at how recent and aggressive home price gains are impacting housing affordability. According to Black Knight Data & Analytics President Ben Graboske, a dwindling inventory of homes for sale is pushing home price growth rates to previously unseen levels.

“Home prices grew at 14.8% on an annual basis in April,” said Graboske. “That’s the highest annual home price growth rate we’ve ever seen – and Black Knight’s been tracking the metric for almost 30 years now. Single-family homes saw the greatest gains, with prices up 15.6% from last April, also an all-time high, while condo prices are up 10%. Driving this growth are two key elements: historically low interest rates and – more acutely – the lack of available for-sale inventory. The total number of active listings was down 60% from the 2017 to 2019 average for April. It’s not getting any better, either. Data from our Collateral Analytics group showed there was two months’ worth of single-family inventory nationwide in March, the lowest share on record and trending downward. In fact, there were 26% fewer newly listed properties in April as compared to pre-pandemic seasonal levels.
emphasis added

Click on graph for larger image.

Here is a graph on delinquencies from Black Knight:

• The national delinquency rate fell to 4.66% in April, just 0.5% above its pre-Great Recession average and 1.5% above its pre-pandemic level

• That said, the overall delinquency rate has been improving at a much faster rate than later stage delinquencies

• At their respective current rates of improvement, overall delinquencies would normalize by the end of 2021, but 90+ day delinquencies would take roughly three years to normalize

• That scenario is unlikely, however – 90-day delinquencies will reach an inflection point later this year as forbearance plans expire and many homeowners return to making mortgage payments

• As of the end of April, there are still 1.8M such serious delinquencies, 1.3M more than prior to the pandemic

And on existing home inventory from Black Knight:

• The number of active for-sale listings was down 53% in April from the same time last year and 60% off the 2017-2019 average for April, for a deficit of nearly 750,000 available homes for sale

• Black Knight’s Collateral Analytics group found just two months’ worth of single-family inventory nationwide in March, the lowest supply on record and trending downward

• While new listings in April were up 33% year-over-year, that was from a pandemic stricken April 2020, when listing volumes had fallen off significantly

• There were 26% fewer newly listed properties in April as compared to pre-pandemic seasonal levels, roughly on par with the 26-29% deficits seen over the first three months of the year

There is much more in the mortgage monitor.

by Calculated Risk on 6/07/2021 10:38:00 AM

One of the key questions for 2021 is: Will inventory increase as the pandemic subsides, or will inventory decrease further in 2021?

Tracking inventory will be very important this year.

Click on graph for larger image in graph gallery.

This inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research.

As of June 4th, inventory was at 329 thousand (7 day average), compared to 706 thousand the same week a year ago.  That is a decline of 53.3%.

A week ago, inventory was at 327 thousand, and was down 54.5% YoY.  Seasonally, inventory has bottomed.  

Inventory was about 7.5% above the low in early April.

Mike Simonsen discusses this data regularly on Youtube.

by Calculated Risk on 6/07/2021 08:30:00 AM

These indicators are mostly for travel and entertainment.    It will interesting to watch these sectors recover as the vaccine is distributed.   

IMPORTANT: Be safe now - if all goes well, everyone could be vaccinated by July 4th.

----- Airlines: Transportation Security Administration -----
The TSA is providing daily travel numbers.

Click on graph for larger image.

This data shows the seven day average of daily total traveler throughput from the TSA for 2019 (Light Blue), 2020 (Blue) and 2021 (Red).

The dashed line is the percent of 2019 for the seven day average.

This data is as of June 6th.

The seven day average is down 27.5% from the same day in 2019 (72.5% of 2019).  (Dashed line)

There was a slow increase from the bottom - and TSA data has picked up in 2021.

----- Restaurants: OpenTable -----
The second graph shows the 7 day average of the year-over-year change in diners as tabulated by OpenTable for the US and several selected cities.

IMPORTANT: OpenTable notes: "we’ve updated the data including downloadable dataset from January 1, 2021 onward to compare seated diners from 2021 to 2019, as opposed to year over year." Thanks!

Thanks to OpenTable for providing this restaurant data:

This data is updated through June 5 2021.

This data is "a sample of restaurants on the OpenTable network across all channels: online reservations, phone reservations, and walk-ins. For year-over-year comparisons by day, we compare to the same day of the week from the same week in the previous year."

Note that this data is for "only the restaurants that have chosen to reopen in a given market". Since some restaurants have not reopened, the actual year-over-year decline is worse than shown.

Dining picked up during the holidays, then slumped with the huge winter surge in cases.  Dining is picking up again.  Florida and Texas are above 2019 levels.

----- Movie Tickets: Box Office Mojo -----
This data shows domestic box office for each week and the median for the years 2016 through 2019 (dashed light blue).  

Blue is 2020 and Red is 2021.  

The data is from BoxOfficeMojo through June 3rd.

Note that the data is usually noisy week-to-week and depends on when blockbusters are released.

Movie ticket sales were at $119 million last week,  down about 52% from the median for the week.

----- Hotel Occupancy: STR -----
This graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four week average.

The red line is for 2021, black is 2020, blue is the median, dashed purple is 2019, and dashed light blue is for 2009 (the worst year on record for hotels prior to 2020).

The 4-week average occupancy is now slightly above the horrible 2009 levels.

This data is through May 29th. Hotel occupancy is currently down 4% compared to same week in 2019  (due to the timing of Memorial Day). Note: Occupancy was up year-over-year, since occupancy declined sharply at the onset of the pandemic. However, the 4-week average occupancy is still down significantly from normal levels.

Notes: Y-axis doesn't start at zero to better show the seasonal change.

----- Gasoline Supplied: Energy Information Administration -----
This graph, based on weekly data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), shows gasoline supplied compared to the same week of 2019.

Blue is for 2020.  Red is for 2021.

As of May 28th, gasoline supplied was down about 3.1% (about 96.9% of the same week in 2019).

The previous week was the first week this year with gasoline supplied up compared to the same week in 2019.

----- Transit: Apple Mobility -----
This graph is from Apple mobility. From Apple: "This data is generated by counting the number of requests made to Apple Maps for directions in select countries/regions, sub-regions, and cities." This is just a general guide - people that regularly commute probably don't ask for directions.

There is also some great data on mobility from the Dallas Fed Mobility and Engagement Index. However the index is set "relative to its weekday-specific average over January–February", and is not seasonally adjusted, so we can't tell if an increase in mobility is due to recovery or just the normal increase in the Spring and Summer.

This data is through June 5th for the United States and several selected cities.

The graph is the running 7 day average to remove the impact of weekends.

IMPORTANT: All data is relative to January 13, 2020. This data is NOT Seasonally Adjusted. People walk and drive more when the weather is nice, so I'm just using the transit data.

According to the Apple data directions requests, public transit in the 7 day average for the US is at 83% of the January 2020 level and moving up.

----- New York City Subway Usage -----
Here is some interesting data on New York subway usage (HT BR).

This graph is from Todd W Schneider. This is weekly data since 2015. 

Most weeks are between 30 and 35 million entries, and currently there are about 11 million subway turnstile entries per week - and generally increasing.

This data is through Friday, June 4th.

Schneider has graphs for each borough, and links to all the data sources.

He notes: "Data updates weekly from the MTA’s public turnstile data, usually on Saturday mornings".

by Calculated Risk on 6/06/2021 07:58:00 PM

Weekend:
• Schedule for Week of June 6, 2021

Monday:
• No major economic releases scheduled.

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

Oil prices were up over the last week with WTI futures at $69.66 per barrel and Brent at $71.89 per barrel. A year ago, WTI was at $39, and Brent was at $41 - so WTI oil prices are UP almost 75% year-over-year (oil prices collapsed at the beginning of the pandemic).

Here is a graph from Gasbuddy.com for nationwide gasoline prices. Nationally prices are at $3.05 per gallon. A year ago prices were at $2.02 per gallon, so gasoline prices are up $1.03 per gallon year-over-year.

by Calculated Risk on 6/06/2021 04:15:00 PM

Congratulations to the residents of Washington State on joining the 70% club at 70.4%! Go for 80%!!!

This data is from the CDC.

According to the CDC, on Vaccinations.

Total doses administered: 301,638,578, as of yesterday 300,268,730. Per Day: 1.37 million.

COVID Metrics
	Current	Yesterday	Goal
Percent over 18, One Dose	63.5%	63.4%	≥70.0%1,2
Fully Vaccinated (millions)	139.0	138.1	≥1601
New Cases per Day3	12,780	13,383	≤5,0002
Hospitalized3	17,563	18,247	≤3,0002
Deaths per Day3	367	346	≤502
1 America's Goal by July 4th, 2my goals to stop daily posts, 37 day average for Cases, Hospitalized, and Deaths

KUDOS to the residents of the 13 states that have already achieved the 70% goal: Vermont and Hawaii are over 80%, plus Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, New Hampshire, California, Maryland, and Washington are all over 70%.

Next up are D.C. at 68.9%, New York at 68.7%, Illinois at 68.2%, Virginia at 68.2%, Minnesota at 68.0%, Delaware at 67.4%, Colorado at 66.9% and Oregon at 66.8%.

by Calculated Risk on 6/06/2021 09:53:00 AM

The following graph shows heavy truck sales since 1967 using data from the BEA. The dashed line is the May 2021 seasonally adjusted annual sales rate (SAAR).

Heavy truck sales really collapsed during the great recession, falling to a low of 180 thousand SAAR in May 2009.  Then heavy truck sales increased to a new all time high of 563 thousand SAAR in September 2019.

However heavy truck sales started declining in late 2019 due to lower oil prices.

Note: "Heavy trucks - trucks more than 14,000 pounds gross vehicle weight."

Click on graph for larger image.

Heavy truck sales really declined at the beginning of the pandemic, falling to a low of 299 thousand SAAR in May 2020.  

Since then, sales have rebounded to near record highs.

Heavy truck sales were at 553 thousand SAAR in May, up from 473 thousand SAAR in April, and up 85% from 299 thousand SAAR in May 2020.

by Calculated Risk on 6/05/2021 05:17:00 PM

This data is from the CDC.

According to the CDC, on Vaccinations.

Total doses administered: 300,268,730, as of yesterday 299,120,522. Per Day: 1.15 million.

COVID Metrics
	Current	Yesterday	Goal
Percent over 18, One Dose	63.4%	63.2%	≥70.0%1,2
Fully Vaccinated (millions)	138.1	137.5	≥1601
New Cases per Day3	13,381	13,972	≤5,0002
Hospitalized3	18,247	18,770	≤3,0002
Deaths per Day3	346	331	≤502
1 America's Goal by July 4th, 2my goals to stop daily posts, 37 day average for Cases, Hospitalized, and Deaths

KUDOS to the residents of the 12 states that have already achieved the 70% goal: Vermont and Hawaii are over 80%, plus Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maryland, and California are all over 70%.

Next up are Washington at 69.9%, D.C. at 68.8%, New York at 68.6%, Illinois at 68.2%, Minnesota at 67.9%, Virginia at 67.9%, Delaware at 67.0%, Colorado at 66.7% and Oregon at 66.6%.

by Calculated Risk on 6/05/2021 08:11:00 AM

The key report this week is CPI.

Other key reports include April job openings, and the April trade balance.

----- Monday, June 7th -----
No major economic releases scheduled.

----- Tuesday, June 8th -----
6:00 AM ET: NFIB Small Business Optimism Index for May.

8:30 AM: Trade Balance report for April from the Census Bureau.

In March, exports were up 8.1% compared to March 2020; imports were up 18.1% compared to March 2020.

Both imports and exports decreased sharply due to COVID-19, and have now bounced back (imports much more than exports).

The consensus is the trade deficit to be $69.0 billion.  The U.S. trade deficit was at $74.4 Billion in March.

10:00 AM ET: Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for April from the BLS.

This graph shows job openings (yellow line), hires (purple), Layoff, Discharges and other (red column), and Quits (light blue column) from the JOLTS.

Jobs openings increased in March to 8.123 million from 7.526 million in February.

The number of job openings (yellow) were down 41% year-over-year, and Quits were up 21% year-over-year.

----- Wednesday, June 9th -----
7:00 AM ET: The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) will release the results for the mortgage purchase applications index.

----- Thursday, June 10th -----
8:30 AM: The initial weekly unemployment claims report will be released.  The consensus is for a decrease to 380 thousand from 385 thousand last week.

8:30 AM: The Consumer Price Index for May from the BLS. The consensus is for 0.4% increase in CPI, and a 0.4% increase in core CPI.

12:00 PM: Q1 Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States from the Federal Reserve.

----- Friday, June 11th -----
10:00 AM: University of Michigan's Consumer sentiment index (Preliminary for June).

by Calculated Risk on 6/04/2021 05:36:00 PM

From Merrill Lynch:

We continue to track 11% qoq saar for 2Q GDP. [June 4 estimate]
emphasis added

From Goldman Sachs:

Following this morning's data, we left our Q2 GDP tracking estimate unchanged at +9.5% (qoq ar). [June 4 estimate]

From the NY Fed Nowcasting Report

The New York Fed Staff Nowcast stands at 4.4% for 2021:Q2 and 5.4% for 2021:Q3. [June 4 estimate]

And from the Altanta Fed: GDPNow

The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2021 is 10.3 percent on June 1, up from 9.3 percent on May 28. [June 1 estimate]