While not a day of impressive gains, the major equity indices are managing to stay slightly in positive territory. Some of the most interesting news of the day came out of Japan, which posted its first monthly trade surplus since June 2012. An 8.5% jump in exports, coupled with a 14.5% drop in imports, left the country with a surplus of about $1.9 billion. Sure would be nice for the US to get there. Additionally, following a slew of positive economic data, the German government raised its 2015 growth expectation to 1.8%, up from its previous estimate of 1.5%. Earnings data was relatively mixed today, but gains in Coca-Cola (KO), Visa (V), and McDonalds (MCD) are leading the Dow Jones Industrial Average higher. One item that turned out to not have a meaningful impact today was the 14^th straight week of crude oil inventory builds.

Domestically, it is housing data that is driving the broader market, thanks to positive results in the early morning release on mortgage applications, in addition to existing home sales and the house price index. Firstly, the cold winter weather may have held down the market, but it’s heading into the spring with new momentum. For the month of March, existing home sales increased by 6.1% to an annual rate of 5.19 million, which was near the high-end of expectations and is the best annual rate since September 2013. Percentage-wise, this 6.1% gain is the strongest monthly gain since December 2010 and among the highest change in the 16 years this data has been recorded. Single-family home sales jumped by 5.5% in March to an annual rate of 4.59 million, while condos jumped by a whopping 11.1% in the month to a rate of 600,000. All geographic regions showed solid gains in total sales, and was principally led by the Midwest at +10.1% and the South at +3.8%. Price data was strong across all regions with the median price up by 5.1% to an average home price of $212,100. On a year-over-year basis, the median price is up 7.8% for the best reading since February 2014. This is slightly below the year-over-year sales rate of 10.4%, which hints at further pricing power down the road. Ultimately, this improvement in prices should help to bring more homes into the market, which would be a plus for future home sales. Homes for sale increased in March to 2.0 million versus 1.9 million in February, but inventory relative to sales still remains tight, at 4.6 months versus 4.7 months in February. A seemingly solid jobs market and low interest rates are big positives for the housing market, and this is also shown in the mortgage application data from this morning.

Additionally, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) released data for its monthly House Price Index (HPI). For February, house sales increased by 0.7% on a seasonally adjusted basis over the prior month. Previously, the agency reported that prices rose by 0.3% in January. Year-over-year, this puts home prices up 5.4% and the US index is 2.9% below the peak level before the recession in March 2007, and is roughly the equivalent of prices in January 2006. When broken down by census regions, seasonally adjusted monthly price changes from between January and February ranged from -1.3% in the East South Central division to +1.8% in the South Atlantic division. The 12-month changes gained the most ground in the Middle Atlantic division (+2.6%) and in the Pacific division (+6.9%). The index is calculated using published home sales price information from all mortgages sold to and or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It’s rather encouraging for the broader housing market that prices are fast approaching pre-recession levels, especially going into the summer months.