Mon, Jul 16 2018, 8:14 AM
Despite complaints about labor, lot, and material shortages, builders needed no more time to build a home last year than they did in 2016. The time di...
Thu, Jul 12 2018, 3:06 PM
While the Labor Department's Employment Situation Report for June showed wages plodding along at a 2.7 percent annual increase, unchanged from May, it...
Thu, Jul 12 2018, 2:57 PM
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) is projecting a decline in new home sales for June, putting them significantly behind those in June 2017. MBA's...
Wed, Jul 11 2018, 11:05 AM
This month's Mortgage Monitor Report from Black Knight, Inc. is again about equity, but this time with a twist regarding the way homeowners are treati...
Wed, Jul 11 2018, 8:02 AM
Despite the Independence Day holiday which both shortened and bisected the week, mortgage activity rallied significantly during the week ended July 6....
Tue, Jul 10 2018, 1:55 PM
The Mortgage Bankers Association attributed an increase in its Mortgage Credit Availability Index (MCAI) last month to increased competition among len...
Tue, Jul 10 2018, 8:26 AM
The foreclosure inventory, that is the percentage of loans in the process of foreclosure, appears to have stabilized at 0.6 percent of all outstanding...
Mon, Jul 9 2018, 11:17 AM
Americans may still feel it is a good time so sell a home and a so-so one for home purchases, but, in June at least, they were feeling a little edgy a...
Fri, Jul 6 2018, 12:54 PM
Recently the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) released a study, based on census data, showing an increasing percentage of young adults, ab...
Thu, Jul 5 2018, 5:22 PM
Fannie Mae's Lender Sentiment Survey has foreshadowed the growing attention to automating the loan approval process. That survey underlined the extent...
Thu, Jul 5 2018, 8:33 AM
In spite of a slight uptick in purchase activity, the overall pace of mortgage applications fell again during the week ended June 29. The Mortgage Ban...
Tue, Jul 3 2018, 2:49 PM
Millennials, it is said, are finally moving out on their own, establishing households and buying houses. But, if new research from the National Associ...
Tue, Jul 3 2018, 11:24 AM
A sure sign that a topic has progressed beyond trending and is now “trended” is when its acronym has firmly replaced the actual name. Artificial intel...
Mon, Jul 2 2018, 11:15 AM
Construction spending was less robust than April's 1.8 percent gain, but the May numbers came in about where the experts expected them. The Census Bur...
Fri, Jun 29 2018, 1:40 PM
A current post in Freddie Mac's Insight blog looks again at the decline in homeownership among young adults and tries to determine the role played by ...
Fri, Jun 29 2018, 8:38 AM
Housing inventory shortages, lack of new construction, and the not-unrelated issues of rising prices and falling measures of affordability have been m...
Thu, Jun 28 2018, 10:40 AM
Persons who buy or refinance a condominium using a Freddie Mac mortgage may soon be able to skip having a traditional on-the-ground appraisal. The com...
Thu, Jun 28 2018, 8:09 AM
Ben Carson, MD, Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) told the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday that his d...
Wed, Jun 27 2018, 10:21 AM
The number of new contracts for existing home sales barely made it onto the bottom rung of analysts' expectations in May. The National Association of ...
Wed, Jun 27 2018, 9:06 AM
Freddie Mac reported today that its total mortgage portfolio increased at an annualized rate of 6.3 percent in May. The portfolio balance at the end o...
Wed, Jun 27 2018, 8:10 AM
The sharp uptick in mortgage applications during the week ended June 15 was short lived. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported a strong reve...
Tue, Jun 26 2018, 5:16 PM
Multifamily and commercial mortgage debt grew by $44.3 billion in the first quarter of 2018, a quarter-over-quarter increase of 1.4 percent, and the l...
Tue, Jun 26 2018, 10:17 AM
The producers of the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller home price indices injected a dose of reality into their report for April. David M. Blitzer Managing D...
Mon, Jun 25 2018, 2:50 PM
There was plenty of foreshadowing, but Fannie Mae's Chief Economist Doug Duncan said last week that cost-cutting has risen as a priority for mortgage ...
Mon, Jun 25 2018, 10:43 AM
The sales of new homes surged in May, outpacing the consensus of expectations, and while one months' data is just that, both median and average home p...
Fri, Jun 22 2018, 12:33 PM
In back-to-back blog posts in the National Association of Home Builder's (NAHB's) Eye on Housing Blog , Paul Emrath details both the extent of the cur...
Fri, Jun 22 2018, 10:20 AM
The Trump Administration formally rolled out a plan on Tuesday to massively reorganize the federal government . The proposal is largely the work of Of...
Thu, Jun 21 2018, 10:26 AM
There has been a lot of hand-wringing for going on two years or so about the incredible shrinking inventory of homes for sale . This week CoreLogic an...
Thu, Jun 21 2018, 9:46 AM
There was another 0.1 percent increase in the Federal Housing Finance Agency's (FHFA's) House Price Index (HPI) in April. The index, which is calculat...
Thu, Jun 21 2018, 8:04 AM
Loans for home purchasing continue to dominate mortgage originations and Ellie Mae says they may now represent the largest share of loans since the re...
Wed, Jun 20 2018, 10:55 AM
Analysts were expecting existing home sales to rebound in May after they fell behind year-ago levels in April. However, the National Association of Re...
Wed, Jun 20 2018, 8:16 AM
Mortgage interest rates waffled, moving in different directions depending on the product last week, but the volume of mortgage applications increased ...
Tue, Jun 19 2018, 11:27 AM
The White House announced on Monday the nomination of Kathy Kraninger as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to replace acting dir...
Tue, Jun 19 2018, 9:59 AM
Residential construction data was mixed for May as reported on Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. ...
Tue, Jun 19 2018, 8:35 AM
Despite a slowing rate of economic growth in the second estimate for the first quarter, Fannie Mae's economists are holding firm in their forecast for...
Mon, Jun 18 2018, 10:22 AM
Builder confidence in the market for new single-family homes ended a three-month slide in May , as the Housing Market Index ticked up two points. This...
Mon, Jun 18 2018, 8:27 AM
Americans are sitting on a nearly unprecedented level of untapped wealth - or maybe sitting IN it is more to the point. A report from Black Knight not...
Thu, Jun 14 2018, 2:24 PM
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) is projecting a decline in new home sales in May. Its computation is based on information from its Builder Appl...
Wed, Jun 13 2018, 10:39 AM
Last week the Mortgage Bankers Association said that independent mortgage bankers had reported negative production revenue in the first quarter of thi...
Wed, Jun 13 2018, 8:06 AM
The flurry of mortgage activity during the week ended June 1st didn't last long. Application volume resumed its months-long retreat last week as inter...
Tue, Jun 12 2018, 11:55 AM
An increase availability of high balance loans helped drive the Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA's) Mortgage Credit Availability Index (MCAI) to a ...
Mon, Jun 11 2018, 4:29 PM
As the value of residential real estate rises with home prices, so has the owner's equity share of that value. Jing Fu, writing in the National Associ...
Fri, Jun 8 2018, 10:05 AM
Despite declining consumer confidence about buying a home, Fannie Mae's Home Purchase Sentiment Index® (HPSI) hit a second consecutive survey high in ...
Thu, Jun 7 2018, 4:47 PM
Happy Anniversary - or something... It is a decade since the financial crisis and ultimately the Great Recession began. Bear Stearns collapsed in Marc...
Thu, Jun 7 2018, 11:22 AM
A nine-month search for a replacement for David H. Stevens as president and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) ended today with the selecti...
Wed, Jun 6 2018, 3:19 PM
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said on Wednesday that independent mortgage banks and mortgage subsidiaries of chartered banks reported net pro...
Wed, Jun 6 2018, 11:23 AM
A Selling Guide Announcement from Fannie Mae on Tuesday introduced a new initiative for loans secured by manufactured housing. The MH Advantage progra...
Wed, Jun 6 2018, 8:11 AM
The dip in mortgage rates reported by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) for the week ended June 1 was small compared to the 10-basis point declin...
Wed, Jun 6 2018, 8:06 AM
Wells Fargo continued to shrink its retail banking footprint this week with the sale of its banking branches in Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio...
Tue, Jun 5 2018, 9:19 AM
There is easy money, which in mortgage lending terms would be exemplified by underwriting standards in the 2005-2008 period, and there is tight money,...
