Mortgage Demand Surges!… Huh?

It's interesting to see people reposting this story, "Mortgage demand surges!" Talk about abusing statistics. This headline is based on mortgage applications which is a week-over-week statistic. Meaning, a huge increase in this as a percentage could simply mean the demand was…

It’s interesting to see people reposting this story, “Mortgage demand surges!”

Talk about abusing statistics. This headline is based on mortgage applications which is a week-over-week statistic. Meaning, a huge increase in this as a percentage could simply mean the demand was low the prior week.

Also, let’s go back and look at what mortgage demand typically does right after the new year – /plots/indicators/united-states/united-states_mortgage-applications.html

January 13th, 2023 up 27.9%

January 8th, 2021 up 16.7%

January 10th, 2020 up 30.2%

January 4th, 2019 up 23.5%

So mortgage demand for this time of year is significantly down from its historical norm(not to be mistaken for anything statistically significant).