Wed, Mar 23 2016, 11:05 AM
Sales of newly constructed single-family homes did a partial bounce back in February from a disappointing January in which sales dropped by over 9 per...
Tue, Mar 22 2016, 10:29 AM
Fannie Mae's Economic Summary for March reports an improvement in financial market conditions and reduced concerns about an imminent risk of reces...
Tue, Mar 22 2016, 10:20 AM
After a revision to previously reported December numbers the Federal Housing Finance Agency's (FHFA's) House Price Index (HPI) has now risen by one-h...
Tue, Mar 22 2016, 10:05 AM
A major conversation topic is how lenders must adhere to a new certification when making a Federal Housing Administration-backed mortgage. The FHA u...
Mon, Mar 21 2016, 11:29 AM
Research by RealtyTrac finds the percentage of homes that were bought and sold within 12 months (i.e. flipped) soared to 5.5% of all homes, reaching a...
Mon, Mar 21 2016, 11:18 AM
"Fizzle" was the description the National Association of Realtors® (NAR's) used for existing home sales in February. Those sales, which had increased...
Thu, Mar 17 2016, 10:35 AM
It's not exactly a startling concept but one that has been underlined by recent events; there is a strong correlation between the performance of the...
Thu, Mar 10 2016, 11:56 AM
If the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) is correct there was a huge jump in new home sales in February. MBA's Builder Application Survey (BAS) whic...
Wed, Mar 2 2016, 1:46 PM
Only slightly more than 10 percent of all home sales in December were distressed properties. CoreLogic said on Wednesday that sales of lender owned r...
Tue, Mar 1 2016, 10:57 AM
I head to Atlanta today for a conference on preventing fraud, and decided to see what its housing market has been up to recently. It turns out that At...
Mon, Feb 29 2016, 11:00 AM
Pending home sales kicked off 2016 by declining nationally and in three of the country's four regions. The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) sa...
Mon, Feb 29 2016, 10:31 AM
Lenders everywhere are looking forward to a great March given their swollen locked pipelines . As thousands of operations folks descend on Ellie's co...
Fri, Feb 26 2016, 2:33 PM
The percentage of homes sales that were all cash transactions increased in November, bucking a long term trend . CoreLogic, in its monthly cash sale...
Thu, Feb 25 2016, 11:17 AM
The Federal Housing Finance Agency's House Price Index (HPI) for December came in slightly higher than the Case-Shiller National Home Price Index di...
Wed, Feb 24 2016, 11:00 AM
A sharp drop in sales in the West brought about an overall decline in the national rate of new home sales in January. The U.S. Census Bureau and the ...
Wed, Feb 24 2016, 10:44 AM
Here's your IT lesson for the day. The NSA's Skynet program utilizes metadata to identify suspected terrorists. The system uses mass surveillance of...
Tue, Feb 23 2016, 11:01 AM
Existing home sales and home prices both increased in January, the latter again driven by a tight supply of available houses in many markets. The Nat...
Tue, Feb 23 2016, 10:26 AM
Actuaries, statisticians, the press, and the mortgage industry love acronyms and abbreviations, any list of which would take up this entire commentary...
Mon, Feb 22 2016, 10:12 AM
In the last 50+ years Detroit has lost nearly two thirds of its population. (Yes, 2/3.) And now the City of Detroit is offering up a mortgage pair...
Fri, Feb 12 2016, 11:30 AM
(Note: Monday is a federal holiday , and there will be no commentary.) Here's a note I received from the owner of an independent mortgage bank with a...
Thu, Feb 11 2016, 6:57 PM
The
Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA's) early estimate of new home sales for
January projects a 14 percent increase compared to December. MBA ...
Thu, Feb 4 2016, 12:22 PM
The percentage of total home sales transactions that are
completed in cash continues to decline on an annual basis as distressed homes
become less a...
Wed, Feb 3 2016, 6:24 PM
Freddie Mac's economists are expressing concerns about what
they see as economic headwinds revealed by some recently released
indicators. In thei...
Tue, Feb 2 2016, 10:55 AM
Once again a report on home price changes indicates that appreciation
has not yet slowed . CoreLogic issued a
report on its Home Price Index for D...
Fri, Jan 29 2016, 2:59 PM
Are the big companies who have purchased large number of
single-family homes over the last few years looking for a quick profit or are
they in the...
Thu, Jan 28 2016, 10:39 AM
And we have a trifecta!
All three of the home sales indicators for December have now come in
positive, although the latest, pending sales, did so l...
Thu, Jan 28 2016, 10:27 AM
Zillow
is predicting that the rental market will cool down this year. Median
U.S. rents grew at a 3.3 percent annual pace in December, to $1,381...
Thu, Jan 28 2016, 2:00 PM
There was a slight uptick in the market
share of distressed home sales in November.
Sales of lender-owned houses (REO) and short sales accounted fo...
Wed, Jan 27 2016, 10:41 AM
New home sales more or less blew away the experts in
December, coming in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 544,000 units. The Census Bureau ...
Mon, Jan 25 2016, 10:58 AM
Rumors are swirling that AIG has decided to pursue a partial spin-off of its mortgage insurance business,
United Guaranty (UG). Stay tuned for t...
Fri, Jan 22 2016, 11:29 AM
The
FHA's insurance fund is out of the headlines , having moved above the
mandated 2% level. (Yes, for the first time since 2008!) Everyone agree...
Fri, Jan 22 2016, 11:23 AM
It is hard to sort out the closings scheduled for December
from those delayed into the month from November by problems with the new
Truth-in-Lending...
Thu, Jan 21 2016, 10:48 AM
New home sales, according to an unofficial estimate from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) declined by 5 percent
in December compared to the p...
Fri, Jan 15 2016, 1:02 PM
Two factors appear poised to positively affect
the ability of households to purchase a home according to Fannie Mae's economists. In their initial...
Thu, Dec 31 2015, 12:41 PM
Given
my Resolutions from a year ago, and looking back at 2015, I've got
today to get skinny, save money, learn French, and undrink 987 bottles
...
Thu, Dec 31 2015, 1:46 AM
Sales of distressed properties made up 10.2 percent of total
home sales in October CoreLogic said on Tuesday. The October number represented a sli...
Wed, Dec 30 2015, 10:45 AM
Pending home sales dipped slightly in November, the third
time in four months they have done so. The
National Association of Realtors®
(NAR's) P...
Wed, Dec 30 2015, 10:39 AM
Death
is rarely funny, and the aftermath can be even worse. But here's an
interesting twist on things. Even in our digital world where e-mortgages...
Wed, Dec 30 2015, 3:26 PM
The Multi-Indicator Market Index (MiMi) produced by Freddie
Mac's Office of the Chief Economist shows that the U.S. housing market is
within the out...
Tue, Dec 29 2015, 12:25 PM
Home prices continue to confound predictions
of decelerating gains. The S&P/Case-Shiller National Home Price Index
gained 5.2 percent over the 12 ...
Mon, Dec 28 2015, 12:02 PM
Fetch
your HP 12c - here's some math magic. Take 259, multiply it by your
age, and then multiply that by 39. You'll see an interesting result.
(...
Wed, Dec 23 2015, 11:22 AM
It
is the holiday season. Some of us abstain from drinking alcohol, some
of us don't. And among those that don't abstain, some drink a little and
...
Tue, Dec 22 2015, 12:11 PM
Yesterday I posted some USDA rural housing updates ,
and received a couple notes from astute readers on a couple errors. The
upfront guarantee fe...
Tue, Dec 22 2015, 11:20 AM
Existing home sales declined considerably in November
although the National Association of Realtors, in reporting the data, blamed in part new
dis...
Mon, Dec 21 2015, 11:09 AM
Cash sales rose incrementally in
September while continuing to diminish as a share of all sales on a
year-over-year basis. CoreLogic, in it's
mont...
Mon, Dec 21 2015, 11:00 AM
Congratulations
- from here on out we'll see more daylight in the Northern Hemisphere
every day. And for readers living in Anchorage, Alaska, wher...
Fri, Dec 18 2015, 3:15 PM
Should national housing policy move beyond its traditional
emphasis on homeownership to focus more broadly on "shelter?" Faith Schwartz, CoreLogic...
Tue, Dec 15 2015, 10:04 AM
What
is this? Fear of a bubble in commercial real estate? Apparently the Fed
is increasingly concerned about asset pricing and lending practices i...
Fri, Dec 11 2015, 6:49 PM
Over the next three weeks we will probably be subjected to more housing
forecasts for 2016 than ads for Chia Pets.
Here is the version provided b...
Thu, Dec 10 2015, 10:56 AM
Tis the season could be the
theme for the Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA's) estimate of November new
home sales . According to data acquired
...
