A reasonable quarter from JPMorgan (JPM) this morning. Read more from our banking correspondent David Hollerith.
I hopped on JPMorgan’s earnings call and asked CFO Jeremy Barnum his views on the housing sector following the Fed rate cut. Overall, the housing boom doesn’t appear to be taking shape as interest rates fall – but activity has picked up.
Here’s what Barnum told me (emphasis mine):
“What we’ve seen, as you would kind of expect, is an increase in mortgage applications and an uptick in refinances there, which again is what you’d expect as well. But it’s worth noting that when it comes to mortgages, all the sequential changes and year-over-year changes come from a base Very low, and it remains the case that the vast majority of mortgage inventory now outstanding in this country is below 6% and much of it is still below 5%.
So it would take a really big rise in the long end of the yield curve to see a big rebound in refinancing. The homes view on home prices, you know, I think generally you have a tension between potentially an economy that weakens a little bit that would create more supply, and there’s more construction, but overall there’s a shortage of housing in this state. So it seems to me that the housing market is still a bit stuck.“
“Devoted student. Bacon advocate. Beer scholar. Troublemaker. Falls down a lot. Typical coffee enthusiast.”