HOSPITALIZATIONS. Since July 14, the Houston area has reduced COVID ICU patients by 350 and general bed populations by almost 1,000. We're still near capacity in the ICUs - mainly from non-COVID patients, and were never near capacity in general beds. I'm not looking at cases at this point because I have very little confidence in the quality of that number - the standards keep changing, they want to include confirmed and "probable" cases, and the tests are still taking too long. If you want to know how many cases the Houston area has, test the viral loads at wastewater treatment plants. Until then, the most reliable indicator is what you see on the chart below, and if you'd like to monitor them yourself, you can follow the SETRAC dashboard.

20% OF HARVARD'S FRESHMEN DEFERRED. Normally I would put this in the links section below. But Harvard recently released information indicating 20% of the freshman class deferred enrollment; and only 25% of students will reside on campus - Harvard had invited 40%. One college president (not Harvard) in the article said "we won't count our students until we see the whites of their eyes."

BUSINESS CYCLE RECOVERY. The Dallas Fed tracks Leading Indicators and a Business Cycle Index for the Houston area. Both indexes are in recovery, and the business cycle index showed its first month-over-month increase since December.

HOUSTON HAS RECOVERED 120,000 JOBS. There is no better estimate for Houston employment than the numbers from the Dallas Fed. Like many of you I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop - I think this is positive news that that other shoe may be farther off than we think.

EXISTING HOME SALES FALLING. Existing home sales have nosedived. I think there are number of reasons for this - inventories are low and people are concerned both with strangers in their homes and going into stranger's homes. But it's also for a big reason: right now, almost 50% of Houston area households can afford the median priced new home.

50% OF HOUSTON HOUSEHOLDS CAN AFFORD A NEW HOME. This chart looks at the median priced new and existing home and the percentage of households that can afford each based on typical mortgage terms. The x scale shows the mortgage rate. If rates stay this low for much longer, I'm going to have to add a 2% section. I should retitle the chart "Share of Households Priced In by Mortgage Rate Changes."

CAN YOU SPOT THE PANDEMIC? The pandemic is almost invisible in new home sales data. The two charts below show new home sales from HAR MLS. The first chart compares January to July in 2015-2020. The market shows almost 1,500 more sales in this year than last. The second chart shows monthly sales since January 2014 - and the pandemic is only visible in the second to the last dip - that was our spring sales season - and the large jump after that. This is not what I had expected back in March.

JOB LOSSES CONCENTRATED AT THE LOWER END OF THE WAGE SCALE. I've left this in from last week. The graph of the Phillips curve show that average wages have jumped; this is because the losses have been concentrated at the low end of the scale, bumping up the average.