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
...
Mon, Dec 7 2015, 10:53 AM
The government sponsored enterprises'' (GSE's)
introduction of 97 percent loan-to-value (LTV) mortgages, implemented by Fannie
Mae' in late 2014 and...
Wed, Dec 2 2015, 10:53 AM
"I
spent half my money on gambling, women, and booze. The other half I
wasted." Not that politicians would ever waste money - after all, they
ca...
Wed, Dec 2 2015, 4:24 PM
Is it our imagination or has the return to normal levels of
distressed home sales become an agonizing endurance test? Despite a nearly steady down...
Tue, Dec 1 2015, 10:23 AM
In response to yesterday's blurb about the movie "Home Alone" being 25 years old Carol K. sent, "You know you're old when you watch 'Home Alone' and w...
Mon, Nov 30 2015, 10:58 AM
There was a slight uptick in contract signings for home
purchases in October after two straight months of declines. The National Association of Re...
Mon, Nov 30 2015, 9:30 AM
Hiring
can be tough during the holidays for a variety of reasons. Plenty of
people don't want to make a move, have full pipelines destined to clo...
Wed, Nov 25 2015, 11:53 AM
New home sales in October reversed their sharp downturn in
September and also bucked other recent sales trends, rising by a substantial 10.7
perce...
Wed, Nov 25 2015, 10:51 AM
Price increases did not slow in the
third quarter as expected the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) said
today. The agencies purchase-only
s...
Wed, Nov 25 2015, 10:46 AM
As a reminder, the FFIEC has released a new version of the IT Management Booklet , available here . The Federal Financial Institutions Examination C...
Wed, Nov 25 2015, 5:12 PM
Mortgage rates broke from tradition today by maintaining an almost perfectly flat trajectory leading up to Thanksgiving. This time of year is typ...
Tue, Nov 24 2015, 10:45 AM
Nonbank online lender CashCall
has paid $2 million in restitution and fines to settle California state
allegations that the company duped consum...
Mon, Nov 23 2015, 10:51 AM
Pending sales, which had declined in
both September and October did indeed prove to be a leading indicator for
existing home sales in October. The
...
Mon, Nov 23 2015, 9:58 AM
What
is a huge concern of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? It isn't rates, or
credit risk. It is having their business flow, and that of their
client...
Fri, Nov 20 2015, 9:45 AM
With the year nearing an end Fannie Mae's chief
economist Doug Duncan and his Economic & Strategic Research (ESR) Group are
holding to their most r...
Thu, Nov 19 2015, 11:24 AM
Is the dream of a decent education gone
for the children of middle-class Americans?
A new study by RealtyTrac indicates that if you consider standa...
Thu, Nov 19 2015, 11:00 AM
The share of cash sales inched up
slightly in August, reaching 31.7 percent, a 0.8 percent month-over-month
change. Despite the marginal change,
c...
Thu, Nov 19 2015, 2:49 PM
Home sales appeared to slam on the brakes in October, at
least according to Redfin. The company
said sales increased by only 0.3 percent compared...
Tue, Nov 17 2015, 10:52 AM
Well that didn't last long.
After jumping to the highest level in a decade in October the Housing
Market Index (HMI) a measure of builder confidenc...
Mon, Nov 16 2015, 3:42 PM
While we have all been
sitting around waiting for millennials to take the homeowner plunge we have
apparently overlooked that both they and their pa...
Fri, Nov 13 2015, 12:10 PM
After last months' disappointing Census Bureau report on September
new home sales - down 11.5 percent from a solid August - one might hope for an
Oc...
Thu, Nov 12 2015, 3:36 PM
The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) is calling the third quarter of 2015
unquestionably the best quarter for the housing market in a decade...
Thu, Nov 5 2015, 10:50 AM
It seems that
homeowners can again reasonably expect that investing in a home might be a real
investment . While buying a home
certainly isn't a ...
Wed, Nov 4 2015, 3:32 PM
Sales of distressed properties, an
increasingly negligible portion of all home sales, slipped even further in
August. Sales of lender owned or RE...
Fri, Oct 30 2015, 10:24 AM
Besides
the adults taking over Halloween, and the underwriting department
duking it out with accounting to see who takes home this year's
depart...
Thu, Oct 29 2015, 10:47 AM
It wasn't just new home sales that slipped in September. The National Association of Realtors® (NAR)
reports that pending sales also cooled; dipping...
Thu, Oct 29 2015, 10:43 AM
Let's
start with something non-mortgage related but that may be of interest
to some. Who doesn't go faster than the posted speed limit on a freewa...
Tue, Oct 27 2015, 10:41 AM
rice
gains since the recent low have increased faster and were less driven by
inflation than prices during the housing boom of the last decade accor...
Mon, Oct 26 2015, 11:01 AM
New home sales
nose-dived in September , dropping by 11.5 percent from the August level. A joint release from the U.S. Census Bureau
and the Depar...
Mon, Oct 26 2015, 10:40 AM
Don't
ask me how we arrived at the last week of October already, but here we
are barreling toward Halloween and changing the clocks Sunday morning...
Mon, Oct 26 2015, 1:15 PM
Two Pennsylvania metropolitan areas, Scranton and
Harrisburg, won the MiMi seal of approval in August. Freddie Mae said the two moved into what it
...
Fri, Oct 23 2015, 10:51 AM
Despite
a steadily decreasing share of distressed sales and fewer investors in the
market all-cash sales have not yet returned to normal levels no...
Thu, Oct 22 2015, 11:02 AM
The sharp downturn in existing home sales in August now seem
little more than a fluke as sales resumed their positive pattern in September. The Na...
Thu, Oct 22 2015, 7:33 AM
Over the past two days, we saw a surprisingly strong move higher in European bond yields that spilled over to US bond markets. The effects were mute...
Tue, Oct 20 2015, 5:26 PM
There
was good news and bad news from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) as it
made 2016 economic predictions to its members gathered in San D...
Mon, Oct 19 2015, 10:44 AM
It is official, the slump in builder
confidence is over. The National
Association of Home Builders (NAHB) said today that ten years after it began
...
Mon, Oct 19 2015, 10:39 AM
From my narrow view, the big talk of the San Diego MBA conference so far? Fannie & Freddie's rep & warrant changes, the FHA's position on the CFP...
Wed, Oct 7 2015, 3:25 PM
The housing industry has long expected
that pending home sales in a given month will fairly accurately forecast the actual
sales transactions that f...
Tue, Oct 6 2015, 10:47 AM
CoreLogic said on Tuesday that its Home Price Index (HPI)
including distressed sales rose on a year-over-basis for the 42 nd
consecutive month in...
Tue, Sep 29 2015, 10:48 AM
CoreLogic reported yet another decrease in the share of
all-cash home sales in June. Those sales
accounted for 31.3 percent of the total during...
Tue, Sep 29 2015, 10:39 AM
Price gains accelerated slightly in July, increasing on an annual basis
by 4.7 percent compared to a 4.5 percent year-over-year increase in June. Th...
Mon, Sep 28 2015, 10:46 AM
The volume of pending home sales lessened a bit as summer
wound down after strong numbers were posted in May and June and the July numbers,
while sm...
