Earlier today, the National Association of Realtors released its estimate of pending home sales for the month of April. Its index showed that the number of signed real estate contracts for existing single-family homes nudged higher last month by 0.3% compared to March. On a year-over-year basis, meanwhile, the figure shot up by 10.3%.
“The housing market continues to squeak out gains from already very positive conditions,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. Yun went on to predict that “total existing home sales are expected to rise just over 7% to about 5 million this year.”
This trend should come as no surprise if you’ve been following the news. We learned last week that new and existing-home sales grew in April by 29% and 10%, respectively, compared to the same month in 2012 — to read more about this, click here. At the same time, moreover, home prices have been slowly gaining momentum while mortgage delinquencies and underwater loans are on the decline.
Suffice it to say, this is music to Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC)’s ears, given that it underwrites roughly a third of the nation’s mortgages. And making the tune even sweeter is the fact that mortgage rates are beginning to creep back up since the Federal Reserve implemented its third round of quantitative easing — which, not incidentally, is aimed at driving down long-term interest rates.
As you can see in the chart above, according to Freddie Mac, the rate on a 30-year fixed-rate conventional mortgage came in at 3.81% this week, an increase of 22 basis points from the prior week’s 3.59%. While higher rates lower the value of mortgage-backed securities, they push up the net interest margin of lenders that retain mortgages on their balance sheets as opposed to selling them off to private investors or one of the government-sponsored entities. And because Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC) has a recent history of doing more of this than its peers, it could very well be in a position to benefit accordingly.
Does this mean that Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC) is a buy? Maybe. Maybe not. As a general rule, I’m a proponent of passively managed index funds such as the SPDR S&P 500 or the SPDR S&P Dividend ETF. That being said, if you were inclined to buy a bank stock, there are few that are better than Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC).
The article Why Wells Fargo Stock Is Headed Higher originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by John Maxfield.
John Maxfield has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Wells Fargo. The Motley Fool owns shares of Wells Fargo.
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