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
...
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...
