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U.S. households are now spending the equivalent of $5,000 a year on gasoline, up from $2,800 a year ago, according to Yardeni Research.

In March, the annual rate of gasoline spending was at $3,800, Yardeni noted. During the week of May 16, the national retail price for gasoline reached a record $4.59 per gallon, the firm said.

“No wonder that the Consumer Sentiment Index is so depressed. The wonder is that retail sales have been so surprisingly strong during April and May,” Yardeni said in a note.

Yardeni said consumers’ inflation-adjusted incomes are barely growing, but they have accumulated a lot of savings, and they are charging more on credit cards.

But Yardeni said don’t bet against the U.S. consumer: “When we are happy, we spend money. When we are depressed, we spend even more money!”

Retail sales data for April, released Tuesday, was surprisingly strong. On a year-over-year basis, retail sales rose 8.2% for the month.

Gasoline sales actually declined in April from March, as prices temporarily fell before ramping up to record levels in May. Spending on gasoline in April surged almost 37% from a year ago, according to Commerce Department data.

The price of gasoline was $3.04 per gallon a year ago, according to AAA. This week, the average price rose above $4 a gallon in all 50 states, according to AAA data.

The national average Wednesday was $4.57 per gallon, according to the AAA website.

Mortgage rates actually fell slightly last week, but the damage has already been done to housing affordability. Both refinance and purchase loan demand dropped, pulling total mortgage application volume down 11% for the week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index.

Mortgage applications to purchase a home declined 12% week to week and were 15% lower compared with the same week one year ago. That was the first weekly drop in homebuyer demand since the third week in April. Mortgage rates have risen over 2 full percentage points since the start of the year, and home prices are up more than 20% from a year ago.

The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($647,200 or less) decreased to 5.49% from 5.53%, with points increasing to 0.74 from 0.73 (including the origination fee) for loans with a 20% down payment.

Inflation isn’t helping consumers feel particularly flush either.

“General uncertainty about the near-term economic outlook, as well as recent stock market volatility, may be causing some households to delay their home search,” said Joel Kan, an MBA economist.

Applications to refinance a home loan continued their landslide, falling another 10% week to week. Refinance demand was 76% lower than the same week one year ago. Two years of record-low interest rates during the Covid pandemic incited a refinance boom which has now gone bust. There is simply a very small pool of borrowers who can now benefit from a refinance.

While dropping very slightly from the week before, the adjustable-rate mortgage share of total applications remained high at 10.5%. It was around 3% at the start of this year. ARMs offer lower interest rates and can be fixed rate for up to 10 years.

Mortgage rates moved higher again Tuesday, after strong retail sales data and comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who said the Fed would not hesitate to continue boosting interest rates until inflation came down.

The weekly drop in homebuyer mortgage demand concurs with another report out Tuesday from the nation’s homebuilders. They reported a considerable drop in both buyer traffic and current sales conditions, according to the National Association of Home Builders. Builder sentiment dropped to the lowest level in nearly two years.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell emphasized his resolve to get inflation down, saying Tuesday he will back interest rate increases until prices start falling back toward a healthy level.

“If that involves moving past broadly understood levels of neutral we won’t hesitate to do that,” the central bank leader told The Wall Street Journal in a livestreamed interview. “We will go until we feel we’re at a place where we can say financial conditions are in an appropriate place, we see inflation coming down.

“We’ll go to that point. There won’t be any hesitation about that,” he added.

Earlier this month, the Fed raised benchmark borrowing rates by half a percentage point, the second increase of 2022 as inflation runs around a 40-year high.

Powell said following that increase that similar 50 basis point moves were likely to come at ensuing meetings so long as economic conditions remained similar to where they are now.

On Tuesday, he repeated his commitment to getting inflation closer to the Fed’s 2% target, and cautioned that it might not be easy and could come at the expense of a 3.6% unemployment rate that is just above the lowest level since the late 1960s.

“You’d still have a strong labor market if unemployment were to move up a few ticks,” he said. “I would say there are a number of plausible paths to have a soft as I said softish landing. Our job isn’t to handicap the odds, it’s to try to achieve that.”

The U.S. economy saw growth contract at a 1.4% pace in the first quarter of 2022, due largely to ongoing supply side constraints, spread of the omicron Covid variant and the war in Ukraine.

However, tighter monetary policy has added to concerns about a steeper downturn and has sparked an aggressive sell-off on Wall Street. In addition to the 75 basis points in interest rate hikes, the Fed also has halted its monthly bond-buying program, which is also known as quantitative easing, and will begin shedding some of the $9 trillion in assets it has acquired starting next month.

Powell said he still hopes the Fed can achieve its inflation goals without tanking the economy.

“You’d still have a strong labor market if unemployment were to move up a few ticks. I would say there are a number of plausible paths to have a soft as I said softish landing. Our job isn’t to handicap the odds, it’s to try to achieve that,” he said.

He added that “there could be some pain involved to restoring price stability” but said the labor market should remain strong, with low unemployment and higher wages.

Builder sentiment in the market for single-family homes fell sharply in May, as mortgage rates shot higher and building material costs showed no relief.

Sentiment fell an outsized 8 points to 69 in May, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index. Readings above 50 are considered positive, but this is the fifth straight month that builder sentiment has declined.

It’s the lowest reading since June 2020, when builders had a brief, quick negative reaction to the beginning of the Covid pandemic before rapidly bouncing back. As the economy shut down, demand for single-family homes with outdoor space in the suburbs skyrocketed. Builder sentiment hit a record high of 90 by November 2020.

Taking out that pandemic effect, this month’s reading is the lowest since September 2019, when the U.S. trade dispute with China was taking a hard toll on building material supply chains.

“Housing leads the business cycle, and housing is slowing,” said NAHB Chairman Jerry Konter, a builder and developer in Savannah, Georgia.

Of the index’s three components, current sales conditions fell 8 points to 78, and sales expectations in the next six months dropped 10 points to 63. Buyer traffic fell 9 points to 52.

Buyers in April saw the average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage jump from 4.88% to 5.41% and then hit a high of 5.64% in the first week of May, according to Mortgage News Daily. The rate started this year at just 3.29%. At the same time, builders saw inflation hit their costs hard.

“The housing market is facing growing challenges,” said NAHB chief economist Robert Dietz. “Building material costs are up 19% from a year ago; in less than three months mortgage rates have surged to a 12-year high, and based on current affordability conditions, less than 50% of new and existing home sales are affordable for a typical family.”

Entry-level buyers are being hardest hit by rising rates, but the drop in demand is showing up across all levels. Some surveys are also showing an increase in cancellation rates for new construction.

“We’re seeing an inflection point,” housing analyst Ivy Zelman said in an interview on CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on Monday.

“Our survey did see a pickup in cancellation rates,” Zelman said. “We did see a tick up in incentives, and some of the cancellations, we’ve heard from some of the hotter markets, were actually private investors.”

Regionally, on a three-month moving average, builder sentiment in the Northeast was unchanged at 72. In the Midwest, it fell 7 points to 62, and in the South it fell 2 points to 80. In the West, sentiment fell 6 points to 83.