Weekly Rate Update - 2/13/2006

It was a fairly quiet week in the bond market last week. Prices in bonds declined slightly resulting in about a 0.125% increase in Atlanta mortgage rates over the past week. Without much economic news to drive the market, bonds were left to the old supply and demand model to set pricing. With an influx of new paper into the market in the form $48B in new debt for the US, absorbing this new debt into the bond market resulted in a softening of prices.

There was some good news over the past week, however. There has been some concern recently that foreign interest in purchasing our bonds had waned somewhat. Last week's data shows that there is still healthy interest on the part of foreigners with 65.1% of the new 30-year treasuries being sold to foreign investors.

This week shows a full docket of financial data with Retail Sales, the Manufacturing Secotr, and Housing Starts. A strong downward trend in the bond market since January 23rd means that it will take signifigantly weak financial data to break out of the current trend.

In Atlanta, Georgia Mortgage and Atlanta, Georgia Real Estate news:
Builders appear to be going after baby boomers here in the Atlanta market. Atlanta has recently become one of the top markets to attract retiring baby boomers. The ARC (Atlanta Regional Commission) is predicting that Atlanta will have a population of nearly 1.2 million people over age 60 by 2030. This means serious demand for builders catering to the lifestyles of the aging baby boomers and increased demand and appreciation to continue for the Atlanta and Georgia regions.