Mortgage markets improve with less tariff drama.

Happy Friday from Local Mortgage!

Another decent week for mortgage rates, as the absence of new tariff drama in the past few days helped settle mortgage markets as we continue to recover losses from two weeks ago. We moved down to 6.375% for most 30-year fixed conventional scenarios.

Monday was by far the worst day of the week as markets sold off in response to President’s Trump’s vocal criticism of Chairman Powell and threat to fire the Fed Chairman. However, we have seen a nice rally in the last few days as Trump backed off his threats and investors continue to move back towards pre-tariff positions. The theory that the initial moves from both US and China caused the most uncertainty in the markets and that everything should start to normalize as agreements are negotiated is starting to take shape.

This week’s main economic reports centered on housing. Existing home sales fell 6% from February to March, making it the slowest March since 2009. The median existing home price however was up 3% from this last time last year. National inventories, while still stuck at historically low levels, increased by 20% up to a 4-month supply.

New Home sales fared better than existing, rising 7% from February to March, however the median new home sale was down 8% from this time last year.

Next week, of course any tariff news will continue to play a major role in the direction of the markets.  As for economic data, it will be a busy week with GDP and Core PCE on Wednesday, manufacturing data on Thursday and the key employment report on Friday.

Hope everyone has a great weekend and thanks for reading.