US housing market soars as loans reach new records

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And you think Australian property is booming? The US is having another mammoth surge in property values, helped along by debt of course. From the WSJ:

Mortgage lenders issued $1.61 trillion in purchase loans in 2021, up from $1.48 trillion in loans issued in 2020 and marking the highest mortgage borrowing numbers ever recorded.

The 2021 figures exceeded a previous record set in 2005, when $1.51 trillion in loans were issued.

Home prices went up by 18.4 percent in October, marking a slight drop from when home prices were up by 19.1 percent in September.

Home prices in the U.S. rose by 18.4 percent in October, according to the data from the S&P Dow Jones CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-City Composite Home Price NSA Index released on Tuesday.

This growth in home prices marked a slight drop from the 19.1 percent increase that was reported in September.

But with a strong labor market, Americans who have obtained pay raises or saved during the pandemic are potentially prepared to step into the housing market despite the soaring costs.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that wages for all private-sector workers increased by 4.6 percent year over year in the third quarter, the Journal noted.

“All of that extra income goes somewhere, and a lot of it went into housing,” Taylor Marr, deputy chief economist at Redfin Corp., a real-estate brokerage, told the newspaper.

Luckily there’s only three rate rises on the way for mortgagees this year in the US….