Mon, Dec 4 2017, 9:51 AM
Black Knight, (which has just rebranded itself, dropping "Financial Services from its name), has released an especially meaty Mortgage Monitor for Dec...
Fri, Dec 1 2017, 11:33 AM
Construction expenditures so far this year continue to run ahead of what was spent in 2016, with private construction accounting for most of the incre...
Fri, Dec 1 2017, 9:51 AM
Fannie Mae's Book of Business increased at a compounded annual rate of 1.6 percent in October, to a value of $3.200 trillion compared to $3.195 trilli...
Thu, Nov 30 2017, 12:29 PM
Mortgage bank profits declined in the third quarter of 2017 when compared to the second quarter, but remained substantially higher than in the two rat...
Thu, Nov 30 2017, 9:57 AM
The issue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and their about-to-be-zero capital buffers has fallen off the radar in recent months, but apparently there is ...
Wed, Nov 29 2017, 10:19 AM
Pending home sales posted their first strong showing in three months in October, beating even the most optimistic of predictions. The National Associa...
Wed, Nov 29 2017, 8:45 AM
The short business week preceding the Thanksgiving holiday resulted, as usual, in fewer mortgage applications. The Mortgage Bankers Association said i...
Tue, Nov 28 2017, 2:35 PM
Loan limits were frozen in place at $417,000 for 10 long years after the housing bust, but were finally raised on January 1 of this year. Rapidly incr...
Tue, Nov 28 2017, 10:35 AM
In October, David Blitzer, Managing Director and Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said home price increases "appear unstoppab...
Mon, Nov 27 2017, 5:17 PM
Black Knight Financial Services reported on Monday that home prices as measured by its national Home Price Index (HPI) continued to slow on a monthly ...
Mon, Nov 27 2017, 10:49 AM
It wasn't supposed to happen after the banner month for new home sales in September, but sales of those homes rose significantly again in October, jum...
Mon, Nov 27 2017, 9:16 AM
It should be an interesting day at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). In fact, the Federal Reserve, which is charged with funding the ag...
Wed, Nov 22 2017, 11:42 AM
As predicted, mortgage delinquencies resulting from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma continued to play out in October. Black Knight Financial Services, in i...
Wed, Nov 22 2017, 8:47 AM
This month's half-hearted rally in refinancing didn't last long . During the week that ended November 10, applications for refinancing made up more th...
Tue, Nov 21 2017, 11:00 AM
Existing home sales continued a gradual recovery in October after a summer of sliding sales. For the second straight month the National Association of...
Tue, Nov 21 2017, 9:40 AM
Freddie Mac's Economic and Strategic Research Team gave its forecast for housing in 2018 (which, as discussed below, it is now hedging a bit) in its O...
Mon, Nov 20 2017, 9:28 AM
Mortgage delinquencies surged higher in the third quarter of 2017. Most of the increase came in the early stages of non-performance, and much of it ap...
Fri, Nov 17 2017, 5:29 PM
Housing activity in the third quarter of 2017 is described as "continuing its rough patch" in Fannie Mae's latest edition of Economic Developments . T...
Fri, Nov 17 2017, 10:12 AM
The interest rate for loans originated (closed) in October inched down 1 percentage point to 4.20 percent, the lowest rate thus far in 2017, and the s...
Fri, Nov 17 2017, 9:59 AM
It has been a while since all three measures covered in the residential construction report were strongly positive. In fact, certain metrics bordered ...
Thu, Nov 16 2017, 10:38 AM
Builder confidence increased for the second consecutive month after taking a hit in September from the late summer hurricanes. The National Associatio...
Thu, Nov 16 2017, 9:50 AM
Richard Cordray, first Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), will leave the agency at the end of the month. Cordray announced h...
Wed, Nov 15 2017, 12:24 PM
With new home building still lagging other measures of the housing recovery, and lean inventories of new homes causing shortages of existing homes as ...
Wed, Nov 15 2017, 10:29 AM
FHA's Mortgage Insurance Fund (MIF) lost ground this past year, which is bad news for those hoping for a cut in its fees. The Department of Housing an...
Wed, Nov 15 2017, 8:56 AM
The week ended November 10 saw a strong pickup in applications for refinancing but continued weakness in those for home purchases. The Mortgage Banker...
Tue, Nov 14 2017, 11:24 AM
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) says that information collected through its Builder Application Survey (BAS), shows mortgage applications for n...
Tue, Nov 14 2017, 10:52 AM
To no one's surprise, measures of mortgage distress , including delinquencies, serious delinquencies, and foreclosures, were down again in August , wi...
Tue, Nov 14 2017, 10:00 AM
Most households buy a home to live in and raise a family. Consequently, they may not view a home as a financial asset in the same way they view their ...
Fri, Nov 10 2017, 12:55 PM
Someone must have passed a law; if it is November, you must publish something debunking bubbles. The saturation point is near, but the latest contribu...
Thu, Nov 9 2017, 4:56 PM
In June the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) released a "working paper" from the Rosen Consulting Group and the Fisher Center for Real Estate a...
Wed, Nov 8 2017, 3:52 PM
Fannie Mae blamed diminished confidence in both buying and selling a home for a 3.1 percentage point drop in its Home Purchase Sentiment Index (HPSI) ...
Wed, Nov 8 2017, 12:08 PM
According to CoreLogic, it doesn't matter whether you rent or recently bought a home, your housing costs probably went up over the last year. Two sepa...
Wed, Nov 8 2017, 9:11 AM
Mortgage application activity was generally muted last week accoording to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). Where there were changes in the MBA'...
Tue, Nov 7 2017, 11:37 AM
Data from CoreLogic could be sounding a bubble alarm. The company's Home Price Report for September jumped almost a point from the previous month, and...
Tue, Nov 7 2017, 9:56 AM
During the first eight months of 2017, home prices increased at the fastest clip than any equivalent time period since 2013. Black Knight Financial Se...
Tue, Nov 7 2017, 9:56 AM
Access to mortgage credit changed very little over the first nine months of 2017, and when there were increases, it seemed always to be the availabili...
Mon, Nov 6 2017, 11:20 AM
The last of a series of three working papers on the hurdles hampering homeownership was introduced on Friday in conjunction with the 2017 Realtors® Co...
Fri, Nov 3 2017, 10:43 AM
While the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) was fast out of the box yesterday, slamming the newly released Republican tax reform proposal, ...
Fri, Nov 3 2017, 10:14 AM
The second in a scheduled three-part hearing on Sustainable Housing Finance was held on Thursday by the Housing and Insurance subcommittee of the Hous...
Thu, Nov 2 2017, 3:46 PM
Congressional leadership and the Trump Administration stand accused of " abandoning middle-class taxpayers in favor of high-income Americans and wealt...
Thu, Nov 2 2017, 11:52 AM
The rate of appreciation slowed a bit, but home prices both nationally and in most major metropolitan areas grew substantially in the third quarter of...
Thu, Nov 2 2017, 11:41 AM
There was a slight increase in total spending on construction in September. The U.S. Census Bureau says that all construction put in place during the ...
Wed, Nov 1 2017, 12:01 PM
Fannie Mae's Book of Business increased at a compounded annual rate of 2.7 percent in September to a value of $3.196 trillion compared to $3.188 trill...
Wed, Nov 1 2017, 11:51 AM
Whenever housing prices rise faster than the rate of inflation, the question arises, are we in a housing bubble? Two Urban Institute (UI) analysts, Bi...
Wed, Nov 1 2017, 8:10 AM
The week ended October 27 saw yet another decline in mortgage applications, making it the sixth week out of the last seven that the Mortgage Bankers A...
Tue, Oct 31 2017, 12:47 PM
The overall homeownership rate barely budged in the third quarter of 2017, and remains only 1 percentage point above its all-time low reached in the s...
Tue, Oct 31 2017, 10:14 AM
It is increasingly hackneyed to say it, but home price appreciation accelerated yet again in August. The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home...
Tue, Oct 31 2017, 9:23 AM
A new tool to measure the nation's largest consumer credit market came on-line this week. The new Mortgage Performance Trends tool, launched by the Co...
Mon, Oct 30 2017, 11:35 AM
The demand, steady gains in employment, low interest rates, and higher rents are all incentives to buy a home. But the National Association of Realtor...
Mon, Oct 30 2017, 9:36 AM
We know that politics makes strange bedfellows. Still we get confused when they rise up and switch partners in the middle of the night. A mere 25 days...