Fri, Aug 18 2017, 10:33 AM
Freddie Mac announced today that, going forward, not every application for a purchase mortgage will necessarily trigger an appraisal . A new automated...
Fri, Aug 18 2017, 10:24 AM
As investors flooded into the housing market after it collapses, they brought cash with them. At one point, 35 percent of home sale transactions were ...
Thu, Aug 17 2017, 3:33 PM
Although home affordability is high, relative to pre-crisis levels, the rate at which their prices are increasing is cause for concern. Andrew LePage,...
Thu, Aug 17 2017, 10:04 AM
There is still life left in refinancing. While at nowhere near the levels of a few years ago, Ellie Mae's Origination Insight Report for July reported...
Wed, Aug 16 2017, 10:57 AM
Headstrong is a rather interesting word, but the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) chose it to describe the continuing imbalance between supply ...
Wed, Aug 16 2017, 9:54 AM
After posting unexpectedly high numbers in June, all three residential construction indicators lost ground in July , and one, housing starts, is now r...
Wed, Aug 16 2017, 8:17 AM
A decline in applications for home purchases nearly overwhelmed the gain made by refinancing activity during the week ended August 11. The Mortgage Ba...
Tue, Aug 15 2017, 1:04 PM
One of the many shifts endured by the housing industry during the Great Recession was the entry of institutional investors into the single-family hous...
Tue, Aug 15 2017, 10:31 AM
Builder confidence made a strong comeback this month , surprising analysts and belying some of the gloom expressed by the National Association of Home...
Mon, Aug 14 2017, 5:24 PM
Housing, at least according to Freddie Mac vice president and chief economist Sean Becketti, isn't unaffordable. It just feels that way . Becketti, in...
Mon, Aug 14 2017, 10:45 AM
About a month ago, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) seized on the May Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey (JOLTs) report as an indi...
Fri, Aug 11 2017, 6:16 PM
Citing increased fraud affecting its education and testing procedures, the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System (NMLS) is implementing a new biometr...
Thu, Aug 10 2017, 11:28 AM
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) expects there will be a sharp downturn reported in July sales of newly constructed homes. While its Builder App...
Thu, Aug 10 2017, 11:12 AM
Freddie Mac has made some changes to the way in which lenders must handle rental income. The changes are primarily aimed at determining the stability ...
Wed, Aug 9 2017, 2:23 PM
Jumbo loans have historically been more expensive for borrowers than those the meet the "conforming" loan limit - which is currently set at $424,100. ...
Wed, Aug 9 2017, 9:10 AM
CoreLogic reported on Tuesday that the national mortgage delinquency rate in May was the lowest in nearly a decade . The company's Loan Performance In...
Wed, Aug 9 2017, 8:26 AM
Refinancing performed well during the week ended August 4, pulling the Mortgage Bankers Association's Market Composite Index higher. The Index, a meas...
Tue, Aug 8 2017, 11:27 AM
Like all large financial institutions, the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are required by the Dodd-Frank Act to su...
Tue, Aug 8 2017, 9:08 AM
Consumer attitudes toward buying and selling a home turned negative in July. Fannie Mae's National Housing Survey conducted during the month found few...
Mon, Aug 7 2017, 11:28 AM
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's (the GSE's) low downpayment loans are apparently beginning to cause some pain for FHA lending. Black Knight's Mortgage Mo...
Mon, Aug 7 2017, 9:18 AM
CoreLogic says conditions in the mortgage market are once again fertile ground for mortgage fraud . The company's National Fraud Risk Index hit a new ...
Fri, Aug 4 2017, 11:23 AM
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs, or "government-sponsored enterprises") were already well past having paid back taxpayer bailouts before this wee...
Thu, Aug 3 2017, 4:29 PM
Within hours of each other Laurie Goodman, co-director of the Urban Institute's Housing Finance Policy Center, and Melvin Watt, Director of the Federa...
Thu, Aug 3 2017, 11:07 AM
While adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) make up only a fraction of mortgage originations (just over 6 percent in the most recent Mortgage Bankers Assoc...
Wed, Aug 2 2017, 12:34 PM
Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Melvin L. Watt focused much of his speech to the National Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB) on its fi...
Wed, Aug 2 2017, 10:13 AM
In April, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) published its proposal for reform of the housing finance system. This week Mike Fratantoni, MBA's Chi...
Wed, Aug 2 2017, 9:41 AM
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) has strongly endorsed passage of a bill, recently introduced into the U.S. Senate which the trade gro...
Wed, Aug 2 2017, 8:43 AM
The volume of mortgage applications declined during the week ended July 28. There were fewer applications for both purchase mortgages and refinancing ...
Tue, Aug 1 2017, 12:11 PM
Construction spending, both public and private, dropped 1.3 percent in June . Spending was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1.21 trillion comp...
Tue, Aug 1 2017, 10:44 AM
Home prices chalked up another healthy gain in June . CoreLogic reports that its Home Price Index (HPI) marked a 6.7 percent increase compared to the ...
Mon, Jul 31 2017, 11:39 AM
Pending home sales recovered from a three-month swoon in June, increasing 1.5 percent in June. The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) said its Pe...
Mon, Jul 31 2017, 9:10 AM
The last of the May's four home price indices (HPI) that MND tracks, the version supplied by Black Knight Financial Services, was released on Monday. ...
Fri, Jul 28 2017, 11:46 AM
The U.S. homeownership rate ticked up by 0.1 percentage point in the second quarter of 2017, to 63.7 percent. The rate, which trended down for several...
Fri, Jul 28 2017, 9:29 AM
Freddie Mac's Outlook this month looks at what it calls "the spoiler," the lean inventory of newly constructed homes for sale. While the situation isn...
Thu, Jul 27 2017, 2:22 PM
Freddie Mac has announced a change in requirements for its Home Possible Mortgages, including Home Possible Advantage Mortgages. The changes involve l...
Thu, Jul 27 2017, 2:16 PM
The mortgage servicing industry, which took a beating in the public mind during the housing crisis, has somewhat rehabilitated its image in recent yea...
Thu, Jul 27 2017, 10:39 AM
Freddie Mac is projecting that 2017 will be another good year for multi-family housing. The company, a major presence in financing multifamily housing...
Wed, Jul 26 2017, 10:09 AM
New home sales pulled out a slight month-over-month gain in June only because estimates of sales in May were revised down. The U.S. Census Bureau and ...
Wed, Jul 26 2017, 8:31 AM
A decline in purchase mortgage applications cancelled out most of a moderate increase in refinancing during the week ended July 21. Nonetheless, the M...
Tue, Jul 25 2017, 2:08 PM
Unless one follows the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac conservatorship drama on a regular basis, it is easy to get lost in the legal weeds. MND has dipped in a...
Tue, Jul 25 2017, 10:42 AM
The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index hit another new record in May, the sixth consecutive month it did so while the Federal Housin...
Mon, Jul 24 2017, 11:35 AM
Most of the major proposals for reforming the housing finance system rely on two steps to minimize the risk that any one or two institutions, and in t...
Mon, Jul 24 2017, 11:30 AM
Existing home sales slipped in June, with the blame again placed on low levels of inventory . The decline in sales, announced on Monday by the Nationa...
Fri, Jul 21 2017, 11:29 AM
It remains to be seen if it passes into law, or how it will hold up during the process, but housing industry groups say an agreement has been hammered...
Thu, Jul 20 2017, 3:39 PM
The single agency security toward which the GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), have been...
Thu, Jul 20 2017, 9:28 AM
Refinancing held its ground in June, with that share of the mortgage market remaining at 32 percent. While that is a significant decline from the 47 p...
Thu, Jul 20 2017, 9:15 AM
Black Knight Financial Services said on Thursday that continued low interest rates fostered another increase in prepayments . The national prepayment ...
Wed, Jul 19 2017, 9:48 AM
Housing permits and starts both reversed their respective two-month slides in June, and both did so convincingly , far outpacing analysts' expectation...
Wed, Jul 19 2017, 8:24 AM
Mortgage application volume bounced back during the week ended July 14, following a sharp downturn a week earlier. That week had been shortened by the...
Tue, Jul 18 2017, 11:43 AM
Our neighbors to the north seem to think the grass is pretty green on this side of the fence. The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) says that fo...
