Portland Mortgage Market Update — August 15, 2025

It was inflation week and rates stayed strong for the most part. The CPI was released on Tuesday and came in pretty much in line with what the market was expecting. Then the PPI came out on Thursday and… well it wasn't great. In fact, it came in quite a bit higher than what was expected but the market saw that importers, distributors and wholesalers on down the line were all sharing the brunt of the additional tariff costs and took that as a positive. Thursday's report could have killed interest rates, but we only moderately worsened and are still holding strong thanks to the hopes to see a rate cut at the next Fed meeting.

Speaking of rate cuts! Fed Governor Bowman spoke this week saying she thinks the Fed is behind on their decision making and needs to make an abrupt about-face with cutting rates 3 times before the end of the year! Bowman is someone I have been critical of in the past (mainly because she is a lawyer serving on the Fed), but recently has been making a name for herself by dissenting from the last Fed decision to keep rates the same and now actively campaigning to slash them. Not surprisingly, she is on the short list of potential candidates to replace Chairman Jerome Powell when he finishes his term next May.

J-Pow visiting J-Hole next week. It's that time of year again, when the Fed convenes in Jackson Hole for their annual symposium which is usually used to signal any potential trends or changes to their monetary policy. This year, the topic for the symposium is "Labor Markets in Transition: Demographics, Productivity and Macroeconomic Policy" which is fitting after the deteriorating jobs numbers that have come out recently. Fed Chair Powell will be speaking late next week, and last year at his speech he pointed to a weak 2024 July labor market report before issuing a 50 bps cut at the September meeting. This year seems to be lining up eerily similar to last year, and hopefully we will get more of the same at their next meeting in September

QUICK PRODUCT ALERT! We just got signed up with a new lender that is doing rental properties with as little as 15% down. Better yet, this is with a DSCR program so as long as the rent pencils out on the subject property, we are good to go! No other income documentation needed to qualify. And get this- the pricing is good too! I have a client in the market right now and I quoted him 6.99% for a 15% down option. If you have anyone looking to buy rental properties, have them give me a call!