Real Estate News Brief - Week Ending April 2, 2022Prices Move Higher, Fed Misstep Worries, Biden’s Housing BudgetIn this Real Estate News Brief for the week ending April 2nd, 2022... consumer prices march higher, Wall Street worries about how the Fed will handle inflation, and Biden’s budget proposal for housing.Hi, I'm Kathy Fettke and this is Real Estate News for Investors. If you like our podcast, please subscribe and leave us a review.Economic NewsWe begin with economic news from this past week and more concerns about inflation. The core personal consumption expenditures price index increased 5.4% from a year ago. That’s the largest year-over-year increase in 40 years. The PCE is considered more accurate than the consumer price index or CPI, and is the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge. The core rate excludes prices for gas and food. If you include those, the PCE is 6.4%. (1)Consumers are spending a larger share of their paychecks because of those higher prices, but they are also splurging on things like hotels, restaurants, and vacations. Government data shows that consumer spending was up .2% in February. People are spending less on things that are harder to get, like new cars and trucks. (2) The unemployment rate dropped to 3.6% in March. That’s close to a 50-year low of 3.5% which the U.S. hit right before the pandemic. The economy also added 431,000 jobs and wages moved higher as companies compete for too few workers. (3) Initial unemployment claims rose slightly last week, but continuing claims fell to their lowest level since 1969. The Labor Department reported that applications were up 14,000 to 202,000 for the week ending March 26th. The total number of claims dropped to 188,000, which is a 27,000 drop from the week before. (4)A lot of Americans are also quitting their jobs for better ones. The data shows that some 4.35 million workers quit in February. Before the pandemic, the average number of people quitting per month was less than three million. A labor shortage has given workers an advantage. Job openings were down slightly in February, but are still near a record high, at 11.27 million. (5)Builders are among those wrestling with the labor shortage. The National Association of Home Builders says construction hiring was up 5.2% but the industry still has about 381,000 open positions. That’s significantly higher than a year ago, when the industry had 257,000 available jobs. The labor gap is making it tough to meet the current demand for housing. (6)The latest report on home prices from Case-Shiller shows a year-over-year increase of 19.1% for the 20-city index. The national index is slightly higher at 19.2%. The FHFA shows a slightly lower rate of home price growth at 18.2%. Homes are appreciating the fastest in Phoenix. The Case-Shiller index shows those prices are up 32.6%. (7)Construction spending was higher in February, but some of that increase is due to inflation. The Census Bureau reported a .8% increase in private sector spending while the producer price index for construction was up .7% in February. On an annual basis, spending has increased the most for single-family construction. It’s up 20% while spending for multi-family construction is up 7.8%. (8)Mortgage Rates Mortgage rates moved higher again this last week. Freddie Mac says the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose 25 basis points to 4.67%. The 15-year was up 20 points to 3.83%. (9)In other news making headlines...CNBC Poll on Economic RisksA new poll shows that Wall Street investors are more concerned about the Fed than they are about inflation. Investors told CNBC that the biggest threat to the economy is a misstep by central bank policymakers. (1)Forty-five percent of those polled listed that as their top concern. Another 33% listed inflation. Russian aggression was listed by 11%. Relations with China got 6% of worries. A new wave of Covid infections was last on the list, at just 4%. CNBC reports that “many notable investors are skeptical