First Team’s Weekly Mortgage Watch (February 23rd, 2014) this week highlights the following updates:

• Mortgage rates wobbled around last week as economic news continues to show a slight slowdown in economic activity.
• Both Housing Starts and Existing Home Sales revealed that the housing market is cooling off to some degree.  Inventories are still tight, and prices continue to move upward.  The LEI continues to show minimal growth, but growth nonetheless.
• The Fed’s last meeting minutes were also released last week, confirming that the Fed believes that the economy is slowly improving.  Surprisingly, there was some discussion of eventually raising interest rates.  However, with inflation continuing to remain in very tame territory, that move is likely sometime in the distant future.
• Mortgage rates will likely continue to bounce around in a fairly tight range next week, as analysts continue to debate whether we are simply hitting another slow patch, or if the economy is losing steam that it will be unable to overcome.
• The week is bookended by Consumer Confidence and a GDP report.  If both reports come in under expectations, then we could see rates backing downward.

Originally posted at: http://www.firstteam.com/blog/?p=7520