Special Episode: How Fed Policy Impacts Housing

As the Fed continues to signal coming rate hikes this year, the housing market will face implications across home sales, mortgage rates, and fundamentals.

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Jay Bacow: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Jay Bacow, Co-Head of U.S. Securitized Products Research here at Morgan Stanley. 

Jim Egan: And I'm Jim Egan, the other Co-Head of U.S. Securitized Products Research. 

Jay Bacow: And on this edition of the podcast, we'll be talking about changes in the Fed policy and what the possible implications are for mortgages and the housing market more broadly. It's Thursday, March 3rd at 11:00 a.m. in New York. 

Jim Egan: Okay, Jay, we've talked about affordability pressures as mortgage rates have moved higher a couple of other times in the past on this podcast, and we would encourage listeners to go back and listen to those prior podcasts for a deeper dive on affordability. But Jay Powell just testified this week that he'll support a 25 basis point hike in March. Furthermore, if inflation pressures are persistent, then he's gonna raise Fed funds by more than 25 basis points at later meetings. The markets priced in six hikes this year. What does that mean for mortgage rates going forward? When I think about affordability, am I gonna have to think of another 150 basis point increase in mortgage rates? 

Jay Bacow: No. So you saying the market has priced in six hikes is really important, because mortgage rates are based on generally sort of the belly of the Treasury curve. And the belly of the Treasury curve is effectively a function of what the market's expecting the Fed to do, along with how much risk premium there is. And if the market's expecting the Fed to hike six times this year, then if the Fed hikes six times this year and there's no change in risk premium, then mortgage rates aren't really going to move very much from where they are right now. Now, Powell said that he's worried about inflation and so if inflation comes in higher than expected or the market changes their demand for risk premium, then mortgage rates are gonna move. 

Jay Bacow: But Jim, mortgage rates have already moved a lot, they've gone up 100 basis points this year in just two months. What does this mean for affordability? 

Jim Egan: From the affordability perspective, it's a problem. But that also really depends on how we define what a problem is. The housing market's been doing very, very well. But when we think about this kind of move in mortgage rates, existing home sales, transaction volumes, they're going to have to fall. 

Jay Bacow: But haven't existing home sales gone up a lot already? 

Jim Egan: Yes, and that's where we think it's important to really look at historical experiences during times like this. If we look back to mortgage rates to 1990 we have five other instances of this kind of increase in mortgage rates. Now, one of those was during the housing crisis, so we're going to remove the experience there, but if I look at the other four instances existing home sales climbed very sharply during that first 6 month period, while mortgage rates were climbing by 100 basis points. That's where we are right now, we're seeing that climb. The 12 months after, the subsequent year, which we're going to start to enter March of this year going forward, that's where existing home sales tend to plateau and in a lot of instances come down. And they tend to come down further if mortgage rates continue to climb during that year, which is what we just discussed. So we think it's very likely, and if historical precedent holds, then we've already seen the peak of existing home sales for at least the next 12 months. 

Jay Bacow: What about home prices? Powell was asked if he thinks that home prices are going to fall and go back to pre-COVID levels, and he said he thought that raising mortgage rates would just slow down home prices, and he doesn't want to see home prices fall. What do we think? 

Jim Egan: Well, I'd like to believe he's reading our research because that's very much in line with how we think about things right now. We think that home price appreciation at a 19% rate right now is going to have to slow. And as we've said on this podcast before, affordability pressures are really one of, if not the key reason that the rate of HPA has to come down. Simply put, potential homebuyers cannot continue to afford to buy homes, at prices that would allow HPA to continue to climb at almost 20% year over year levels. However, if we think about the other factors that would come into play to bring home prices from a positive level to a negative level, we just do not see those characteristics in the market right now. Supply conditions are very constrained. We think they'll be alleviated somewhat this year, but that's not enough for there to be an overhang of supply that would weigh on home prices. We think that the credit availability in the market has been very conservative. We don't think we're at a risk of increased defaults and foreclosures. What we think happens is that transaction volumes fall, as we've stated, as home buyers aren't willing to pay the prices that home sellers want to sell at. But those sellers are not forced. And so you end up with a market that kind of doesn't trade, home price growth slows and we see it bottoming out kind of in a positive 5-6% percent range from here. So, long story short, we agree with that assessment from Jay Powell. 

Jim Egan: Now, the other side of the equation, mortgages. With rates backing up by that much, Jay, what do we think about the mortgage market here? 

Jay Bacow: So rates backing up means that there's going to be less people refinancing. And you said that there's going to be a slowdown in existing home sales as well. But, we're still worried about the supply to the agency mortgage market. And that's because the supply that we care about the most is the new supply coming from new home sales. And the thing about new home sales is that it's about an 8-month period from the time that the homebuilder gets the permit to start building the house, to when it actually gets sold. So we're going to have about 6 more months of supply from people that started to build their house when mortgage rates were a lot lower. And that's going to weigh on the market, particularly given that Powell said during his testimony that they're going to start balance sheet normalization in the coming months. So, we've got supply coming and we've got the biggest buyer stepping away from the market. Now, mortgage rates have gone up and mortgage spreads have widened, but we think there's a little bit more room for mortgages to underperform given the supply that's coming, and the lack of demand coming from the Fed. 

Jim Egan: Certainly interesting times. Jay, thanks for taking the time to talk today. 

Jay Bacow: Always great speaking with you, Jim. 

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