Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

The much-anticipated Consumer Price Index (CPI) was released last week. The CPI is the biggest name in monthly inflation reports.  It's caused big reactions in rates many times over the past few years.

With that in mind, it's not too surprising that rates actually didn't move much in response to CPI.  If anything, the initial impulse was toward slightly higher rates.  It wasn't until the following day's Producer Price Index (PPI) that bond traders saw better evidence of calmer inflation. Both CPI and PPI have been moving lower, but PPI is now all the way back down to target levels.

The following chart shows how 10yr Treasury yields (which tend to correlation with mortgage rate movement) were reacting throughout the week:

Note the initially bad reaction to CPI.  There was a recovery that same afternoon for a variety of potential reasons.  At least one of those reasons had to do with speculation that the Fed is still on track to deliver a series of rate cuts this year in addition to making rate-friendly changes to the way it's managing its bond portfolio.  Fed policy expectations are even easier to see when we look at actual Fed Funds Rate expectations which are now at the lowest levels since July.

Mortgage rates don't correlate perfectly with Fed Funds Rate expectations (one reason we often advise that a Fed rate cut/hike doesn't mean a mortgage rate cut/hike).  As such, they're not back below the recent lows, but they definitely haven't moved much higher.  This week's gentle descent means we're continuing to hold a vast majority of the improvement seen in Nov/Dec.

In Mesa County

There are currently 458 active homes on the market in Mesa County. This is a 1% decrease compared to two weeks ago.

The average sold price YTD is $400,804 and the median sold price YTD is $355,000.

Mortgage Rates Today

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