Heading up: U.S. home prices rose steadily in May, pushed higher by a healthy increase in sales this year. The Associated Press reports The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index climbed 4.9% in May from 12 months earlier, down slightly from a 5% pace in April, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. Home sales have jumped in recent months as an improving economy boosts hiring and enables more people to afford a purchase. Yet the higher sales haven’t encouraged more people to sell their homes, leaving supplies tight and driving up prices. And separate data released by the Census Bureau today pointed to the limited impact of the three-year old housing recovery: The proportion of Americans owning their own homes has continued to decline and is now at the lowest level since 1967. Read the full story.
Around the bend: The Federal Reserve may be as little as six weeks from its first interest rate hike in nearly a decade, but economists don’t expect the central bank to signal its intentions after a two-day meeting that begins today. “We wouldn’t expect any heavy hints… that a September rate hike is coming,” Senior Economist Paul Ashworth of Capital Economics wrote in a note to clients, according to USA Today. Fed Chair Janet Yellen has repeatedly stressed that Fed policymakers will decide when to increase its benchmark rate on a meeting-by-meeting basis in response to the most recent economic data. Yellen told Congress earlier this month that she expects the Fed to make the move later this year. Read the full story.
Going down: U.S. consumer confidence fell this month to the lowest level since September last year. The Associated Press reports consumers are worried about the job market and rattled by events in Greece and China. The Conference Board announced today that its index of consumer confidence fell to 90.9 in July from a revised 99.8 in June. That’s the lowest since September’s reading of 89. Consumers’ assessment of current conditions fell slightly to a still-healthy 107.4 from 110.3 in June, but their outlook for the next six months dropped sharply to 79.9 this month, the lowest since February 2014 and down from 92.8 in June. Read the full story.
