Good job news causes mortgage rates to increase

Last week, the Labor Department released the monthly employment survey, in which it reported that the economy grew by a net 110,000 jobs in September. That was unsurprising.

But another number in the employment report did cause investors to do double takes. The Labor Department revised its August number upward -- way up.

A month earlier, the Labor Department estimated that the economy shrank by 4,000 jobs in August. Now the department says the economy actually gained 89,000 jobs in August. The 93,000-job swing shocked Wall Street (in a pleasant way), and long-term interest rates rose.

The benchmark 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose 8 basis points to 6.5 percent, according to the Bankrate.com national survey of large lenders. A basis point is one-hundredth of 1 percentage point. The mortgages in this week's survey had an average total of 0.34 discount and origination points. One year ago, the mortgage index was 6.42 percent; four weeks ago, it was 6.28 percent.

The benchmark 15-year fixed-rate mortgage rose 8 basis points to 6.18 percent. The benchmark 5/1 adjustable-rate mortgage rose 11 basis points to 6.37 percent. And one rate went down -- the 30-year fixed jumbo, for mortgages of more than $417,000. It fell 1 basis point, to 7.27 percent. The spread between the conforming and jumbo 30-year rates is 77 basis points -- the smallest the gap has been in two months.

Housing still bad news

There wasn't much good news on the housing front this week. Higher rates on most mortgages were just part of it. There also was the new forecast of home sales from the National Association of Realtors. It looks like the Realtors and the Labor Department share some bean counters, because the Realtors keep revising their numbers too. In this case, they keep revising the sales forecast downward every month, as if they're trying to break the bad news as gently as possible.

Back in February, the Realtors predicted that 6.44 million housing units would be resold this year. That forecast has gone down every month since then. Now the association says 5.92 million units will be sold this year -- an 11 percent decrease from last year.

"Luckily for the NAR, they still have two more downward revisions to go" this year, cracks the pseudonymous economics blogger Calculated Risk.

The Realtors keep revising the 2008 forecast, too. Now the 2008 prediction is down to 6.12 million units. Looking for something positive to say, the Realtors' chief economist, Lawrence Yun, says the glass is one-sixteenth full: "One out of 16 American households is buying a home this year," he says.

No up for some markets

In another indication of the poor real estate market, the PMI Insurance Co. released its quarterly U.S. Market Risk Index, which ranks the nation's 50 largest metro areas by the likelihood that house prices will be lower two years from now. Overall, there's a lower risk of prices falling than there was in the previous quarter. But the picture isn't pretty for some markets.

PMI estimates that there's about a 61 percent chance that house prices in Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif., will be lower two years from now. The odds are a bit better in Las Vegas -- about 59 percent. Orange County, Calif., and the Phoenix metro area have about a 58 percent chance of lower prices a couple of years from now. Other markets in Southern California and South Florida are very likely to see lower prices, too.

On the other end of the scale, Texas cities are unlikely to see price declines. It looks like smooth sailing in Fort Worth, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio.

"You're talking about cities with stable populations and very historically stable markets," says Lavaughn Henry, director of economic analysis for PMI. There's a big caveat there: Some of those markets, especially Houston, suffered terrible housing crashes in the 1980s, when the oil business went south. But, unlike today's housing markets in Southern California and South Florida, prices in Texas cities had not skyrocketed before the crash, and they have never skyrocketed since the crash, either.