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Mortgage Rates Expected to Continue Fluctuating

U.S.: Mortgage rates are expected to continue to ride a wave over the next few weeks. As of October 18, according to Mortgage Bankers Association, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate stood at 6.52%. That’s the highest rate in the past two months, but mortgage rates are still below the 7.9% rate of last October. Even though the Federal Reserve last month lowered the rate it charges to banks and is expected to cut rates further before the end of the year, mortgage rates are narrowly impacted by those moves. Instead, mortgage rates are tied to yields on the 10-year Treasury bonds, which have increased in recent weeks.  Meanwhile, prices for existing homes in most of the country continue to be at their peak price point, even as the number of homes on the market continues to increase.

U.S.: There’s a new trend around that was an old trend before the pandemic hit: corporate travel, conferences and retreats. Work-from-home, or from wherever, was big for corporations in 2020 and 2021, but many also saw a decline in productivity and cohesion among its colleagues. Now that many Fortune 500 companies are mandating return-to-office policies, many financial and technology companies also are allocating more funds for retreats or attendance at conventions and conferences. CoStar Group, a data research firm, says that hotel room revenue for groups of 10 or more was up nearly 7% through August, compared to the same period last year. San Francisco, for example, recently hosted approximately 45,000 attendees for Dreamforce, a meeting of the tech industry.

DFW: The federal agency that guarantees checking and savings accounts plans to update its Dallas offices. Plans call for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to renovate space on several floors at the Plaza of the Americas, located on Pearl Street on the east side of downtown Dallas. The work is expected to begin soon and be ready within the next year. Estimates for the renovation and build out are expected to cost more than $2 million.

DFW: New home construction continues to struggle. Residential Strategies, which tracks new home construction in Texas, says that Dallas-Fort Worth builders started 13,327 homes in the third quarter, about a 2% decrease from the third quarter in 2023. Higher costs for everything from land, materials and labor continued to impact the industry over the summer. Even so, Residential Strategies estimates that the annual start rate of about 54,000 units is on track. All eyes continue to be on new buyers, who also are looking at mortgage rates, which are lower than last year, but which have fluctuated over the past month.

FLORIDA: One down. One to go. Billy Joel has sold a mansion on the Intracoastal Waterway, just south of Palm Beach, but he had to slash the price to get it done. He paid $22 million in 2015 for the 13,000-square-foot, nine-bedroom, 11-bath Mediterranean-style home that sits on 1.6 acres. He’s been trying to unload the resort-like estate for the past six years, listing it as high as nearly $65 million. He recently sold the property that sits between the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Worth Lagoon for $42.6 million.  Now, he’s trying to sell his 20,000-square-foot, 18-bedroom estate that sits on 26 acres in Oyster Bay on Long Island for nearly $50 million. But this one has three pools and a helipad.

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