Ahead of the Tape
'Taper' Doesn't Have to Stop House Party</br></br>Home isn't where the Fed is.</br></br>Thanks to its extraordinary efforts to boost the economy, namely by buying hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgage bonds and Treasury debt, the Federal Reserve has engineered a rebound in housing markets. With the central bank now set to scale back its measures -- possibly as soon as next month -- and interest rates already having risen in anticipation, the worry is the party may come to a premature end.</br></br>Last week, numbers showed a surprise slide in new-home sales in July. This week could bring another bad signal should Wednesday's pending-home-sales data for July disappoint.</br></br>Analysts expect that the index from the National Association of Realtors will slip less than 1% from the previous month, while remaining up more than 7% year over year. The fear: A jump in interest rates will have sent far more home buyers to the sidelines. The average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage has risen by a percentage point in little more than three months, to 4.58% as of last Thursday, according to Freddie Mac. There already has been a drop in mortgage applications.