Mon, Jul 6 2020, 11:24 AM
Black Knight has again taken a look at the number of Americans who could benefit significantly from refinancing their first mortgages, but the facts a...
Mon, Jul 6 2020, 9:47 AM
The number of homeowners in COVID-19 forbearance dropped sharply this week, to the lowest level since the first week of May. The number of plans which...
Mon, Jul 6 2020, 9:43 AM
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Bureau) today issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that would amend Regulation Z of the Truth-in-Le...
Mon, Jul 6 2020, 9:40 AM
Freddie Mac reported this week that its total mortgage portfolio increased at an annualized rate of 5.5 percent in May compared to a 14.3 percent gain...
Wed, Jul 1 2020, 8:16 AM
Applications for both refinancing and purchase mortgages retreated last week , pulling the Mortgage Bankers Associations (MBA's) Market Composite Inde...
Tue, Jun 30 2020, 10:12 AM
Home prices continued to hold up on a national basis in April. The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, covering all nine U.S. c...
Mon, Jun 29 2020, 1:38 PM
The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision along partisan lines, took a chunk out of the intentions the Dodd-Frank Act had for the Consumer Financial Protec...
Mon, Jun 29 2020, 10:28 AM
Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors® (NAR), predicted last month that April's home sales contract activity "will be...
Fri, Jun 26 2020, 9:45 AM
After three weeks of declining totals, Black Knight says the number of active COVID-19 forbearance plans shot up over the past week. As of June 23, th...
Thu, Jun 25 2020, 2:03 PM
In his analysis of current mortgage credit tightening for the Joint Center on Housing Studies excerpted here earlier, Don Layton included a special se...
Wed, Jun 24 2020, 10:08 AM
House prices continued to be unfazed by the current economic upheaval. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) reports that its U.S. House Price Ind...
Wed, Jun 24 2020, 8:15 AM
The nine-week string of increases in purchase mortgage applications came to an end last week and refinancing volume pulled back as well. Consequently,...
Tue, Jun 23 2020, 10:59 AM
After its pandemic-related plunge in April, the rapid recovery of the Housing Market Index, a measure of builder confidence, seems justified by today'...
Tue, Jun 23 2020, 10:21 AM
With its so-called GSE Patch set to expire on January 10, 2021 (unless by some miracle the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs) en...
Tue, Jun 23 2020, 10:20 AM
A paper written for the Joint Center on Housing Studies at Harvard University focuses on the causes and effects of mortgage credit tightening in the c...
Mon, Jun 22 2020, 11:16 AM
Existing-home sales fell again in May, although only at a little more than half the rate of decline in April. Still, it marked the third month of fall...
Mon, Jun 22 2020, 9:58 AM
Black Knight reports another breathtaking increase in mortgage delinquencies in its "first look" at May loan performance data. The rate, which soared ...
Fri, Jun 19 2020, 9:49 AM
The number of homeowners in active forbearance plans fell again this past week. Black Knight estimates there are now 4.6 million people remaining in t...
Thu, Jun 18 2020, 11:28 AM
The dominance of conventional lending continued to grow in May . Ellie Mae's Origination Insight Report says those loans made up 82 percent of origina...
Thu, Jun 18 2020, 10:43 AM
Freddie Mac's Economic and Housing Research Group says say that, heading into summer, the housing market is rebounding from the COVID-19 pandemic's da...
Wed, Jun 17 2020, 4:36 PM
There has apparently been considerable confusion regarding servicer obligations to report to credit agencies regarding loans in forbearance. The origi...
Wed, Jun 17 2020, 10:49 AM
Residential construction numbers climbed in May after their pandemic-driven collapse in April. The Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urb...
Wed, Jun 17 2020, 8:13 AM
Mortgage Application volumes continued to grow during the week ended June 12 as mortgage rates reached new lows and states allowed more businesses to ...
Tue, Jun 16 2020, 11:11 AM
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) released its annual Report to Congress for 2019 on Monday. The report summarizes the FHFA's activities as re...
Tue, Jun 16 2020, 10:45 AM
The COVID-19 outbreak struck a major blow to builder confidence in April. The prospect of widespread shutdowns of businesses and prolonged shelter at ...
Mon, Jun 15 2020, 9:49 AM
The continued high volume of refinancing kept mortgage lenders' outlook for profits relatively high during the second quarter, although it was down sl...
Fri, Jun 12 2020, 12:12 PM
Home flipping, defined as buying a home and reselling it (in two arms-length transactions) within a year, accounted for 7.5 percent of all home sales ...
Fri, Jun 12 2020, 11:30 AM
The number of homeowners with mortgages in forbearance has fallen for the second consecutive week. Black Knight reports that, as of June 9, there were...
Thu, Jun 11 2020, 11:56 AM
Home equity reports have not been particularly interesting over the last few years. Home prices kept rising, owners kept whittling down their loan-to-...
Wed, Jun 10 2020, 10:10 AM
Lenders, responding to increasing unemployment rates and other risks, tightened lending standards in May, sending the Mortgage Bankers Association's (...
Wed, Jun 10 2020, 10:09 AM
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) says that mortgage application volume rose significantly during the week ended June 5 as many states began to l...
Tue, Jun 9 2020, 11:47 AM
After falling an aggregate of 29.5 points in March and April, Fannie Mae says its Home Purchase Sentiment Index (HPSI) has begun to recover. The Index...
Tue, Jun 9 2020, 9:38 AM
The strength of the housing industry at the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020 served, to a certain extent, as a buffer as the COVID-19 pandemic began ...
Mon, Jun 8 2020, 9:41 AM
Black Knight says that only three months after the national delinquency rate hit a record low, falling 1.5 percentage point below its pre-Great Recess...
Fri, Jun 5 2020, 2:47 PM
A joint release from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors cautions mortgage servicers about th...
Fri, Jun 5 2020, 11:28 AM
The number of mortgages in forbearance plans declined this past week for the first time since the CARES Act to address the COVID-19 pandemic was enact...
Thu, Jun 4 2020, 2:24 PM
The Urban Institute says that homes categorized as low priced, that is in the bottom 20 percent of the distribution, appreciated 126 percent between t...
Wed, Jun 3 2020, 10:03 AM
Refinancing volume continued to slide but purchase mortgage activity partially compensated during the holiday shortened week that ended May 29. The Mo...
Tue, Jun 2 2020, 11:12 AM
CoreLogic's report on April home prices, the first for that month, says that despite fears that home prices would "bottom out like they did in the Gre...
Tue, Jun 2 2020, 8:21 AM
Overall spending on construction fell in April, down 2.9 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1.346 trillion from 1.387 trillion. This sti...
Mon, Jun 1 2020, 12:15 PM
As was reported last week, new home sales in April were much, much better than expected. There may or may not be a cause and effect going on here, but...
Mon, Jun 1 2020, 11:26 AM
The Urban Institute (UI) releases a regular report, Housing Finance at a Glance , a "chartbook" loaded with charts and commentary on mortgage activity...
Fri, May 29 2020, 9:14 AM
Black Knight says its research is showing that the numbers of new forbearance plans for homeowners financially affected by the COVID-19 pandemic have ...
Thu, May 28 2020, 10:46 AM
Pending home sales cratered again in April, marking two straight months of declines that exceeded 20 percent. The National Association of Realtors® (N...
Wed, May 27 2020, 10:58 AM
Freddie Mac reported this week that its total mortgage portfolio increased at an annualized rate of 14.3 percent in April, up from a 9.2 percent gain ...
Wed, May 27 2020, 9:50 AM
Purchase mortgage applications rose for the 6 th straight week, driving the Mortgage Bankers Association's Market Composite Index back into positive t...
Tue, May 26 2020, 11:37 AM
New home sales, rather than dropping like a rock, rose 0.6 percent in April according to the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urba...
Tue, May 26 2020, 11:11 AM
Even as the COVID-19 pandemic began to hobble home sales in many locations, home prices continued to increase. the Federal Housing Finance Agency's (F...
Fri, May 22 2020, 12:34 PM
The years-long downward trend of mortgage delinquencies appears to have come to an abrupt end in April. Black Knight, in its "first look" at the month...
Fri, May 22 2020, 9:54 AM
The number of homeowners in mortgage forbearance plans continues to increase, reaching 4.75 million by May 19. This is 9.0 percent of all active borro...
