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[ad_1] Local markets is a HousingWire magazine feature spotlighting housing trends across the country. Phoenix, Arizona Phoenix has arguably been one of the hottest housing markets in the country over the past two years, but as mortgage rates have climbed, demand has cooled and inventory has risen dramatically. At some points during the summer, the active listing count for the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale metro area topped 10,000, according to data from St. Louis Fed. “Inventory is rising, and days on market is also a bit longer, but we still have a significant turnover of existing product,” Bob Nathan, a local Engels & Völkers agent, said. “It is not a crazy hot market anymore, it is now just a very strong market, but there are less concessions being given up by the buyer. So it is a little bit more back toward normal.” However, as mortgage rates continue to rise, home-buying demand cools further and concerns about a possible recession become more prevalent. Accordingly, Phoenix is feeling the pain. The city ranked No. 8 in a Redfin analysis of metro areas most likely to feel a big impact as these gloomy economic scenarios materialize. Lafayette, California Just 25 miles east of San Francisco, Lafayette, California, is known for its high quality of life, top-rated schools, low crime rate and some of the highest home prices in the country. In June, the median sales price for a home in Lafayette came in at $2.065 million, according to Redfin. Despite the steep home prices, home-buying competition was intense in Lafayette until mortgage rates began to rise. “We have gone from so many offers on homes and not a lot of inventory to a slightly sleepier environment as people pause and figure out lending and what they can now afford with the decline in the stock market and rising interest rates,” said local agent Dana Green, team leader of the Compass-based Dana Green Team. For sellers, Green said this change means having to alter pricing strategies and being a bit more modest with list prices. However, she noted that this shift did not come as a surprise. “We all saw it coming based off of the number that came out Q1 this year,” she said. “We were at such an unbelievable high, and it obviously can’t stay that way forever. It is hard to know what a normal market looks like anymore. We went from a normal but strong market to the COVID market and now this sudden shift, so we are still trying to figure out what our new normal is.” Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada With easy access to the Pacific Ocean, great skiing and a milder climate than other parts of the country, it is a wonder everyone doesn’t live in Vancouver, British Columbia. During the height of the pandemic, when many people looked to get out of cramped cities, the housing market in Vancouver got a boost from homebuyers from other parts of the country who decided to take advantage of remote work opportunities and relocate. But over the past few months, local eXp Realty agent Sarah Kwan has noticed a shift in the market. “There are definitely a lot more price reductions,” she said. “I first noticed the drop in March because I had a townhome listing and the week prior there was another unit that was virtually the same and it had twice as much foot traffic as we had.” According to Kwan, prices have dropped an average of 2% month over month, but in some markets, she has seen prices drop 10% month over month. Despite these drops, she said that if a property shows well and is priced strategically, it will still generate plenty of interest and possibly even a multiple-offer situation. “In markets where we have seen large price drops in the past 30 days, it is very important that you are looking at sold inventory on a weekly basis and maintaining communication with your clients so you can make changes if you need to.” Kwan said she doesn’t confirm the final list price until right before the home is listed. Looking ahead, Kwan expects the market to continue to slow down. “It was expected regardless of interest rates. It was kind of bound to happen. There is only so long it can keep going up,” she said. Huntsville, Alabama Huntsville, Alabama, is perhaps best known as the birthplace of the Saturn V rocket that would one day send Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon. However, it wasn’t always a bustling metropolis for the military technologies and aerospace industries. The city’s initial growth is attributed to the cotton industry and trade associated with railroad industries. “We have always been known for great white-collar jobs, but we just didn’t have anything to fill the gap,” said John Brooks, a local agent with Coldwell Banker of the Valley. The opening of an Amazon distribution center and the addition of a second Toyota plant, among other things, have changed the situation. The abundance of job opportunities combined with Huntsville’s strong public school system and growing arts and culture scene have made the city a place many wish to call home. “We are usually ranked as one of the best places to live, and with this latest huge migration, a lot of people decided to move here, which gave us a bustling real estate market,” Brooks said. Like elsewhere in the country, high levels of housing demand resulted in rapidly rising home prices and low inventory, but as interest rates have risen and fewer people are looking to make cross-country moves, Brooks said things have slowed down. “I think Huntsville will still see some relocations probably into next year, and I think that is going to help our local market stay balanced,” he said. “We have definitely started getting more inventory, which is a healthy thing because it is not sustainable for everyone to continue to go up $40,000 over list price on every single home.” Huntsville, Alabama, USA

[ad_1] Welcome to my regular post sharing creative ways I’m making do with what we have. I often share these types of things on Instagram stories, but I know a lot of you don’t have Instagram or don’t check it regularly, so I’m transcribing some of my weekly stories into blog posts to give you inspiration and encouragement for ways you can make do and use what you have. I used to bake bread very regularly — often multiple times a week. However, in the past few years, I hadn’t baked bread as much because I’d been finding so many great deals and markdowns on whole wheat/whole grain bread. I would just buy extra loaves when I found a good sale and we always had some in the freezer. But recently, I hadn’t found as many good markdowns on bread and I had actually gotten to the very end of my freezer bread stash. So I first made homemade bread in the bread machine. Then, inspired by my friend, Kate, I decided to try my hand at making 5-Minute Artisan Bread. If you’ve been around here a really long time, you just might remember years ago when I attempted to bake Artisan Bread and it flopped pretty royally. But I decided enough time had passed and I was brave enough to try again. Well, let’s be honest, it also helped that my friend Kate posted a step-by-step video tutorial on Instagram. Now, I need to warn you: the recipe can feel intimidating and like it’s WAY more complicated than the promised 5-Minute recipe it’s touted as. But I think someone very, very, very detail-oriented wrote the recipe and the instructions could be edited down a LOT. It might be easier to just watch Kate’s videos instead. Here’s my first loaf. I took it out of the oven a little earlier than I should have, but it was still delicious. The next loaf (that I didn’t get a photo of), I baked longer and it was crustier. All in all, I’d recommend this recipe. Once I got the hang of it, it was really easy to do and it only takes a few ingredients! [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] U.S. budget deficit halves to $1.375 trln despite $430 billion in student loan costs [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] On Thursday the National Association of Realtors reported that we had a 23.8% year-over-year decline in existing home sales in September and total inventory has now fallen on back-to-back reports. Earlier in the year, I labeled this a savagely unhealthy housing market based on the premise that Inventory would break to all-time lows, creating forced bidding and causing days on the market to collapse. This is not a good ting. With this report, finally, we are now seeing some positive data on this. While still too low for my taste, the days on the market are heading in the right direction —higher — creating balance. With such massive home-price growth in 2020 and 2021 breaking my affordability model, I knew we were at high risk of a more significant sales decline than usual if the 10-year yield broke over 1.94%, which meant 4% + mortgage rates. My premise in the summer of 2020 was that a 10-year yield above 1.94% could change the housing market. The second working premise was that if home prices grew more than 23% in five years, we would be in trouble as well. Well, that got smashed in just two years, and 2022 is another year on the books with significant price gains. Both variables in my model started to dance together in April this year, resulting in our current marketplace. The role of mortgage rates Not only did mortgage rates break above 4%, we are now over 7%. Sales are declining faster than we have seen in the past when rates rose, reeling from the epic one-two punch of the affordability hit from massive price gains since 2020, along with an explosive mortgage rate run-up. Rates have gone up so fast that new listing data has declined since the end of June; this impacts supply and demand. It was a savagely unhealthy housing market back in February, and it has just gotten worse and worse. From NAR: Total existing-home sales, completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums, and co-ops, retracted 1.5% from August to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.71 million in September. Year-over-year, sales waned by 23.8% (down from 6.18 million in September 2021). With nearly 65% of American households having a mortgage rate between 2%-4% and 85.9% having rates of 5% and below, you can see why some sellers are hesitant to list their homes and move. The total cost of housing has gone up so fast that it has changed behavior, and new listing data has declined since June. This is why I consider this housing market sloppy and why mortgage rates moving up so fast is problematic. It would be one thing if rates had moved to 4.75%-5.75%, and we stayed in that range. However, going from 2.5% to 7.37% today is a too fast for some. I am hoping for a more traditional listing season in the Spring of 2023: The last thing we want to see for the spring of 2023 is new listing data going negative year over year. From NAR: Total existing-home sales retracted 1.5% from August to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.71 million in September. As I have talked about often during this year, once the demand data started to get worse, we were in a place where we would see more significant year-over-year declines in the demand data starting in October of this year. This is because last year at this time, mortgage demand started to pick up, so the weekly index will show this first. Purchase App Data Update: -4% week to week -38% year over year -36.25% four-week moving average As we have discussed for some time, the comps have gotten more challenging now that we’re in October, so expect 35%-45% YoY declines to be the norm as demand picked up last year. If more weakness happens, -53%-57% year-over-year declines are in play due to the more challenging comps from October to the end of December. We rarely have non-seasonality growth in this data line, but it did happen last year with mortgage demand, which led sales to 6.49 million. With that in mind, we should see significant declines year over year in the existing home sales data going out to January of 2023. NAR: Year-over-year, sales waned by 23.8% (down from 6.18 million in September 2021). Now that we are getting closer to the end of this year, I believe my price-growth forecast for 2022 will not be correct, as I was looking for a more significant deceleration in price growth. I was looking for the year to end between 5.2% and 6.7%, and it seems we will end the year higher than this.  One thing I can say for sure is that 4%-5% mortgage rates didn’t do the damage I thought they would do, but once rates got to 6%, they did. This goes into my long-term work on housing going back to 2013, when I talked about many of my affordability models getting hit much harder if mortgage rates get above 5.875%, and we are in that stage now. NAR_Research: The median existing-home price for all housing types in September was $384,800, an 8.4% jump from September 2021 ($355,100), as prices climbed in all regions. This marks 127 consecutive months of year-over-year increases, the longest-running streak on record. The silver lining Now on to the positive story: the days on market growth are almost above a teenager print, which hasn’t happened in a while. Having a lot of house options is always a plus for the housing market, and what we’ve had since 2020 was nothing close to balance. I prefer a housing market with 2019 total inventory levels, and we aren’t there yet. Inventory has fallen in back-to-back reports toward 1.25 million. Once we reach a range of 1.52-1.93 million, my low inventory talk goes away, and the savagely unhealthy housing market ends. For 2023, we can get back to these levels as long as we have traditional listing growth with higher rates. If

[ad_1] Moving out on your own, financing a car or landing your dream job—all of this can require having a good credit score. Your credit score indicates how trustworthy you are in the eyes of creditors, and it can range from a low of 300 to a high of 900. A good credit score (typically in the high-600 to mid-700 range) can help you qualify for a car loan, mortgage or insurance. It can help you get the best interest rates from your lender. At times, a landlord or employer may even ask to see your credit score before accepting you as a tenant or offering you a job. For that reason, it’s important to know how credit scores work, was well as how to build or improve your own score. Factors that impact your credit score Young adults tend to have lower credit scores on average than older Canadians. At the time of a 2018 study by Equifax Canada, Canadians aged 18 to 25 had an average score of 692. That was lower than all other age groups—including 26-to-35-year-olds, whose average score was 697. On a positive note, the data also found that young adults’ average scores improved over a 10-year period, in part from apparently learning good financial behaviours early on. Canada’s two credit bureaus, Equifax Canada and TransUnion Canada, have their own credit score formulas, which are not publicly shared. They generally take similar factors into account when determining your score. If you want to build a strong score, the main factors to watch for are: Credit history: This refers to how long you’ve had access to credit. It contributes to your credit score by showing lenders that you are capable of borrowing money and paying it back. Since lenders like to see that you’ve been able to handle credit accounts over a long period of time, it is advisable to not cancel any old or unused credit cards, because that credit history will be erased.  Debt-to-credit ratio: Also known as your credit utilization ratio, this number is expressed as a percentage and indicates how much revolving credit you’re using. That includes your lines of credit and credit cards, in relation to the total amount of credit available to you. Ideally, you want to keep your overall credit balance to 30% or less of your overall credit limit. If you are constantly maximizing or going over your credit limit, companies may wonder if you are able to pay the balance, so you may be flagged as a greater risk for delinquency. Payment history: This is based on whether or not you’ve missed or been late in paying any loan payments. If you miss a payment by more than 30 days, the lender will typically report it to the credit bureaus, and this can negatively affect your credit score.  Credit checks: If you are shopping around for a new credit card, mortgage or car loan, the lender requests your your credit report. This is known as a credit check. If credit checks are conducted too often, lenders may think you are living beyond your means. Ideally, it’s best to shop and get quotes within a two-week period so that all the inquiries are combined into one and don’t raise any red flags. Type of credit used: Lenders want to see the types of credit you carry. Having a mortgage, car loan or line of credit, along with a credit card, helps show you can manage different forms of credit. However, be sure that you can pay back what you borrow, and avoid taking on too much debt. Get free MoneySense tips and more in your inbox! It pays to know. sign up now How to get a 900 credit score in Canada Here are ways to build your credit history and achieve a top credit score.  Check your credit score: You can receive a copy of your credit report and credit score from Equifax or TransUnion either online or by mail. Be sure to check your score with both credit bureaus as they use different scoring models. Also, make sure the reports are accurate, as errors may misconstrue your creditworthiness. Also, verify that no one is trying to steal your identity and opening up accounts under your name. If you find any inaccuracies, report them to the credit bureau to be corrected.  Use different types of credit: It’s common to use a credit card to start building a credit history. However, over time, you will want to add other forms of credit into the mix. If you have outstanding student loans, making regular payments will help pay down your debt, as well as increase your credit score. A cell phone bill you pay off monthly, a car loan, a line of credit and/or a mortgage are all good ways to show you can handle different kinds of credit. Build credit with your rent payments: With the current housing market making it challenging for young adults to become home owners, many are resorting to renting. Historically, renters haven’t been able to use their monthly rental payments to build their credit history since they typically pay by Interac e-Transfer, post-dated cheques or cash. This has now changed with third-party services allowing renters to pay by credit card. Another program being offered is Borrowell’s Rent Advantage, which allows tenants to report their rent payments to Equifax without landlord approval.  Limit the number of credit cards that you have: Opening too many credit cards at once can hurt your credit score, and having too many credit cards in your name can make you look risky to lenders. According to Equifax, two to three credit cards at a time, along with other types of credit, is ideal. When you have access to more than that, it can be challenging to keep track of all your monthly payments. Pay your bills in full and on time: Lenders want to see that you’re responsible in paying your bills on time and in full every month.

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[ad_1] Induslnd Bank Ltd. PT Raised to INR1,510 at HSBC [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] Kyle Prevost, editor of Million Dollar Journey and founder of the Canadian Financial Summit, shares financial headlines and offers context for Canadian investors. Bank on higher interest rates leading to increased profits U.S. earnings season is in full swing, and the banks were some of the first to step up to the plate. They didn’t all hit home runs, but investors were likely quite pleased with their performance. (All values below are in U.S. currency, unless otherwise stated.) Bank of America (BAC/NYSE): Earnings per share of $0.81 (versus $0.77 predicted). Revenue of $24.61 billion (versus $23.57 billion predicted.) Shares rose more than 17% over the last five trading days. Goldman Sachs (GS/NYSE): Earnings per share of $8.25 (versus $7.69 predicted). Revenue of $11.98 billion (versus $11.41 billion predicted). Shares are up more than 6% over the last five trading days. JP Morgan (JPM/NYSE): Earnings per share of $3.12 (versus $2.88 predicted). Revenue of $33.49 billion (versus $32.1 billion estimate). Shares are up 16.5% over the last five trading days. Wells Fargo (WFC/NYSE): Earnings per share of $1.30 (versus $1.09 predicted). Revenues of $19.51 billion (versus $18.78 billion predicted). Shares up 11% over the last five trading days. Morgan Stanley (MS/NYSE): Earnings per share of $1.47 (versus $1.49 predicted). Revenues of $12.99 billion (versus $13.3 billion predicted). Shares up 3% over the last five trading days. Citigroup: Earnings per share of $1.50 (versus $1.42 predicted). Revenues of $18.51 billion (versus $18.25 billion predicted). Shares up over 9% the last five trading days. The broad takeaway from these earnings results is that banks are using expanded interest rate margins (the difference between what they pay out in interest and what they charge for lending money) to boost profits and offset losses in other areas like investment banking. Bank of America has a larger retail banking business than the other banks, so it makes sense that its earnings surprise was more substantial. Morgan Stanley is much more investment banking oriented, and its bottom line was hit by the lack of IPOs and debt/equity issuances. Given that Canadian banks are much more in the mould of Bank of America than they are dependent on the investment banking side of things, I would expect similarly good news in their future. TD Bank (TD/TSX) has the largest U.S. exposure of the Canadian “Big Six” and therefore should track a similar trajectory to what we’ve seen with these U.S. banks over the past week. Canadians looking to invest in these U.S. banks can do so through TSX-listed ETFs, such as the Harvest US Bank Leaders Income ETF (HUBL), RBC U.S. Banks Yield Index ETF (RUBY) and BMO Equal Weight US Banks Index ETF (ZBK). They can also get exposure to JP Morgan, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs in Canadian dollars through Canadian Depository Receipts (CDRs) listed on the Neo Exchange. MoneySense’s ETF Finder Tool Use TOOL Food costs continue to drive Canadian inflation  Consumers, investors and central bankers around the world are desperately looking for signs that tighter monetary policy is succeeding in bringing down inflation. The good news Statistics Canada announced on Wednesday was that inflation dropped for the third month in a row. The bad news was that it only declined slightly, from 7% to 6.9% (it peaked at 8.1% in June). Many economists speculated earlier in the week that inflation would drop by a larger margin. As a result of the relatively high inflation numbers, most market watchers are now predicting another 0.75% rate increase by the Bank of Canada next week. With food prices up 11.4% year-over-year (the fastest rate since “Trudeau the Elder” was sitting on Canada’s iron throne), Canadians continue to feel the pinch at the grocery store. Perhaps most important, core inflation was unchanged at 5.3%. With Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem calling the push against inflation “our biggest test in 30 years” last week, folks hoping to see interest rates come down soon probably shouldn’t hold their breath. Source: CBC News People still need medicine, cigarettes and shaving blades—even in a recession A year ago at this time, it was common to hear high-flying tech and crypto investors say, “Have fun staying poor” to boring consumer-staple shareholders. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Turns out that owning brands such as Aveeno and Gillette is a great way to have fun while not losing money. Johnson & Johnson (JNJ/NYSE): Earnings per share of $2.55 (versus $2.48 predicted) and revenues of $23.8 billion (versus $23.4 billion predicted). Procter & Gamble (PG/NYSE): Earnings per share of $1.57 (versus $1.54 predicted) and revenues of $20.61 billion (versus $20.28 billion predicted). Philip Morris International (PM/NYSE): Earnings per share of $1.53 (versus $1.36 predicted) and revenues of $8.03 billion (versus $7.26 billion predicted). As more and more people gravitate towards proven profitable companies, these types of “boring” dividend machines are likely to become more highly valued by the average investor. Don’t change the channel on Netflix Finally we get to a few of the flashy big-name tech stocks that reported earnings this week. Netflix (NFLX/NASDAQ): Earnings per share of $3.10 (versus $2.13 predicted), and revenues of $7.93 billion (versus $7.84 billion predicted). Netflix shares surged 14% after the earnings announcements on Monday. Subscriber numbers increased more than expected due to popular new programming, such as the latest season of Stranger Things. Investors also welcomed the long-awaited announcement of a crackdown on password sharing. IBM (IBM/NYSE): Earnings per share of $1.81 (versus $1.77 predicted), and revenues of $14.11 billion (versus $13.51 billion predicted). Shares rose 6% in extended trading on Wednesday at the conclusion of the earnings announcement. Like many other companies, IBM cited the strong U.S. dollar as a drag on revenues, but it noted that its customers were mostly accepting of price increases. Tesla (TSLA/NASDAQ): Earnings per share of $1.05 (versus $$0.99 predicted), and revenues of $21.45 billion (versus $21.96 billion predicted). Despite all the noise surrounding the company’s CEO Elon Musk, Tesla managed to double net income on a year-over-year

[ad_1] Grab a FREE Throw Blanket at JCPenney after cash back! Top Cash Back is offering a $10 rebate on a Velvet Plush Solid Throw Blanket purchased from JCpenney, making it FREE! Here’s how to get your FREE throw blanket: 1. Head here for the special Throw Blanket Deal and sign up for a new Top Cash Back account. 2. Buy the Home Expressions Velvet Plush Solid Throw Blanket on sale for $9.88. (This is a limited time sale, so take advantage of it now! It’s regularly $25!) Select free in-store pickup at your local JCPenney to avoid shipping costs. There are multiple colors to choose from! 3. Within 21 days, your Top Cash Back account will be credited with $10 — making it completely free! 4. After you receive the $10 payment in your Top Cash Back account, you can choose to transfer it to your bank account or request a Paypal payment. This is for new Top Cash Back members only. If you are already a member, you are allowed to sign up another adult in your household. This deal is valid through October 28, 2022— or while supplies last. Take advantage of it while the blanket is on sale, though! [ad_2] Source link