Housing Wire

DECEMBER 7, 2023

Since the 2008 housing crisis , there have been significant changes that prompted the Treasury to place Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under conservatorship. While the conservatorship has allowed for the mortgage market to be restored to its pre-crisis state and strengthened these two government-sponsored entities (GSEs), there are significant downsides to maintaining the status quo indefinitely.

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Sacramento Appraisal Blog

DECEMBER 4, 2023

Wall Street has invaded Main Street. It’s truly stunning to see that a company like Invitation Homes owns over 9,000 units in California. Today, I want to debut an interactive map I made to show where these homes are located. UPCOMING (PUBLIC) SPEAKING GIGS: 12/08/23 Free Q&A event for appraisers only (on private work) […] The post This one company owns 9,000+ homes in California (interactive map) first appeared on Sacramento Appraisal Blog.

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Real Estate News

NOVEMBER 21, 2023

Fidelity National Financial, parent company of Chicago Title and more, is blocking access to title and escrow services while it investigates a security breach.

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Inman

OCTOBER 16, 2023

The long-awaited Sitzer | Burnett commission trial is underway in Kansas City, Missouri, and Inman is covering it all live as it unfolds. Check back early and often for news, views, schedules and more.

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Eyes on Housing

OCTOBER 5, 2023

NAHB analysis of the 2022 American Community Survey data shows that New Jersey leads the nation with the highest average annual real estate tax (RET) bill ($9,285)—$8,425 more than yearly property taxes paid by Alabama’s homeowners ($860). The size of this disparity grew 1.1% in 2022 and has increased 9.3% since 2017. Vermont was the only state for which the.

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Appraiserblogs

MARCH 27, 2023

Dear representative, waiving/eliminating property appraisal for lending purposes is wanton recklessness. Fannie Mae’s decision to waive/eliminate property appraisal for lending purposes is nothing more than wanton recklessness that could have serious repercussions in the future. The truth of the matter is that appraisals are an essential part of any mortgage transaction and should not be taken lightly or eliminated without due consideration.

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National Association of Realtors

MAY 8, 2023

Proper documentation can help appraisers evaluate high-performance home features. From the 2023 REALTORS® Legislative Meetings in Washington, D.C.

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BiggerPockets

OCTOBER 20, 2023

On Thursday, Federal Reserve Chairman Powell signaled a prolonged pause in interest rate increases. What does this mean for the market?

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Mashvisor

DECEMBER 18, 2023

Real estate investing is a lucrative venture, but it comes with inherent risks, particularly in the realm of property damage.

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Mortgagebroker News

NOVEMBER 7, 2023

Experts are anticipating the BoC benchmark interest rate to retreat to 4% by the end of next year

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Housing Wire

DECEMBER 2, 2023

What a week! Mortgage rates almost fell below 7%, the 10-year yield is below 4.25% again, and people are seriously talking about Fed rate cuts in 2024. Times can change quickly, which is why we created the weekly tracker so you have the information you need in real-time. Purchase application data Hello, early Christmas present! Mortgage rates have fallen by almost 1% in a short time, and it has created four straight weeks of positive purchase application data.

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Housing Wire

NOVEMBER 13, 2023

Mr. Cooper Group became the target of at least four consumer class-action lawsuits after disclosing a cyberattack at the end of October when customer information was compromised and the company shut down certain systems. On Oct. 31, the Dallas-based servicer and lender said it had experienced a cybersecurity incident with an unauthorized third party accessing certain portions of its technology systems and customer data.

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Housing Wire

OCTOBER 31, 2023

A Kansas City jury has found the National Association of Realtors , HomeServices of America and Keller Williams guilty of colluding to inflate or maintain high commission rates through NAR’s Clear Cooperation Rule, in the Sitzer/Burnett buyer broker commission lawsuit. The defendants have been ordered to pay damages of $1.78 billion. The jury reached its verdict after a little over two weeks of testimony from the plaintiffs and defendants.

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Housing Wire

NOVEMBER 3, 2023

When it comes to marketing your real estate business, video is king. Global statistics from 2023 show that people watch videos an average of 100 minutes a day, with millennials — the largest share of homebuyers in the U.S. — spending 10 to 20 hours a week watching videos. From short Instagram reels to longer videos on YouTube , video is here to stay.

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Housing Wire

DECEMBER 16, 2023

The Federal Reserve played the good grinch for Christmas this year and delivered the best gift for homebuyers nationwide, leading to lower mortgage rates. The 10-year yield and mortgage rates fell together after the Fed meetings, which gave us mortgage rates under 7% last week. Mortgage rates and the 10-year yield What a crazy week! Not too long ago, on jobs Friday, I was on the HousingWire Daily podcast saying it’s time to declare war on the Federal Reserve for being too restrictive; you can li

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Housing Wire

OCTOBER 18, 2023

One in five Americans now shares their homes with adult children, parents or grandparents. In the face of soaring housing costs nationwide, multigenerational living has gained traction as a path to make living expenses more manageable and to maintain closer family bonds. While many multigenerational families are living together under one roof, potentially leading to feelings of overcrowding, accessory dwelling units (ADUs) have emerged as a practical solution for affordable housing that allows f

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Housing Wire

NOVEMBER 25, 2023

Lower mortgage rates tend to take housing supply off the market and demand has been picking up lately as rates have fallen. However, the recent drop in housing inventory has more to do with seasonality factors than lower mortgage rates. Higher mortgage rates did push inventory higher during the seasonal period when it would normally be declining. However, seasonality tends to rule the day eventually.

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Housing Wire

DECEMBER 9, 2023

The most underreported housing story I’ve seen this year is that even with mortgage rates rising to 8%, the number of homes that took price cuts before they sold was 4% below 2022 levels. This happened even with higher home prices and higher mortgage rates in 2023. Weekly housing inventory data We will start with the price cut data percentage because it deserves a detailed explanation. 2022 was a historic year for housing as we had the most significant home sales crash ever, and mortgage r

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Housing Wire

OCTOBER 12, 2023

A coalition of trade associations — including the Community Home Lenders of America (CHLA), National Association of Realtors (NAR), and Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) — on Thursday called on the Biden administration to reduce the historically large spread between the 30-year mortgage rates and 10-year Treasuries. The trade groups noted that the spread sits at over 300 basis points (bps) compared to the historic norm of about 150 bps.

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Housing Wire

NOVEMBER 28, 2023

The baseline conforming loan limit for mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2024 will be $766,550, up 5.5% compared to the current limit of $726,200 , the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced Tuesday. Conforming loan limits are increasing at a slower pace, mirroring home prices, overall. That’s because the FHFA’s conforming loan limit increase is based on a formula related to home-price data in the third quarter of each year.

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Housing Wire

OCTOBER 21, 2023

The haunted house ride with the bond market and mortgage rates continued this week, but one housing data line hasn’t been spooked. New listing data appears unafraid of the mortgage rate ghost story over the last few months. Unlike last year, when new listings data had a noticeable move lower once mortgage rates reached 6%, 8% mortgage rates haven’t had any noticeable impact on the latest new listings data.

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Housing Wire

DECEMBER 8, 2023

After today’s jobs report , which showed unemployment at 3.7%, it’s now clear that the Federal Reserve does not need to create a job-loss recession to bring down the growth rate of inflation. The Fed has much to answer for after their massive rate hikes and quantitative tightening policy. These were created to bring down inflation by impacting the labor market but they disproportionally affected housing in a negative way.

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Housing Wire

DECEMBER 21, 2023

First American is the latest real estate firm to suffer a cybersecurity incident. Sources told HousingWire the incident occurred Wednesday afternoon, with First American confirming the incident Thursday morning. In a statement on the title company’s website it notes that First American has “taken certain systems offline” and that it is working to resume normal business operations as soon as possible.

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Housing Wire

DECEMBER 7, 2023

Mortgage rates continued their downward trajectory this week as the 10-year Treasury yield dropped below 4.2% for the first time since September, according to new data from Freddie Mac. The 30-year, fixed mortgage rate averaged 7.03% for the week ending Dec. 7, according to Freddie Mac ‘s Primary Mortgage Market Survey. That’s down significantly from last week ’s 7.22% and up from 6.33% the same week a year ago.

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Housing Wire

DECEMBER 19, 2023

Boom! Housing starts had an epic beat Tuesday, which usually means the data will get revised lower at some point, but one thing is for sure: the housing starts and new home sales sector came to throw shade at the 2023 recession crowd. Many say housing leads the economy into a recession, which has been the case for decades since higher rates tend to put the U.S. economy into a recession.

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Housing Wire

DECEMBER 13, 2023

The Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC) held its short-term policy interest rate steady at a range of 5.25% to 5.5% at its last meeting of the year on Wednesday. It was the fourth pause recorded in 2023. Investors will parse Jerome Powell’s press conference this afternoon for clues about when and why the central bank might change its policy stance next year.

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Housing Wire

JUNE 9, 2023

Home prices aren’t crashing, despite what the housing bubble boys are saying. In fact, home prices have firmed up higher recently. The housing bubble boys are a crew that from 2012 to 2019 screamed housing crash every year. They went all in during COVID-19 in 2020, doubled down in 2021 as the forbearance crash bros but really bet the farm on a massive home-price crash in 2023 after the most significant home sales crash ever in 2022.

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Housing Wire

JUNE 7, 2023

After the recent extraordinary show of force defending changes to LLPAs by federal regulators and their friends, the forest through the trees risk remains in focus to me. One of the great concerns I have, as both a former regulator and the former head of a major industry trade association, is the downside risk of keeping the GSEs in conservatorship any longer.

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Housing Wire

APRIL 23, 2023

Can we now say that the housing market ‘s spring selling season is finally underway? Since 2020, the seasonal bottom for housing inventory has arrived several months later than normal, making it more complicated to track housing inventory data. Still, we have some promising signs that we might have finally hit the inventory bottom for 2023. We didn’t see too much volatility in mortgage rates last week, but purchase apps declined in reaction to rates rising two weeks ago.

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Housing Wire

DECEMBER 30, 2023

Going into 2023, people thought housing inventory would skyrocket, home prices would crash, and we would see the housing market of 2008 all over again. We created this weekly tracker at the end of 2022 to give people a live weekly outlook on everything that drives the housing market and which factors to follow. Those reading the tracker would have understood why the housing market dynamics shifted on Nov. 9, 2022, and they’ll be ready for what’s coming next.

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Housing Wire

JUNE 20, 2023

The U.S. single-family rental market is still strong, but the pace of rent increases has cooled significantly over the past year. The market is looking more like 2019 than the price spikes witnessed during the pandemic. U.S. single-family rent increases in May registered a 3.7% gain, compared to the 14.2% growth observed in the same month in 2022, according to Corelogic ’s Single-Family Rent Index (SFRI).

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Housing Wire

APRIL 7, 2023

Given Friday’s job report , those who have been concerned with entrenched 1970s inflation — which would lead to double-digit mortgage rates — can put their disco shoes back in the closet. I have tried to explain that the 1970s inflation isn’t a reality , and Friday’s report should ease the fear that wage growth is spiraling out of control.

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Housing Wire

MAY 18, 2023

Just when I thought days on market were returning to normal, that number for existing homes fell back down to 22 days. Why is this so important to me? If the days on the market are at a teenager level or even lower, it’s never a good sign for the housing market. I would say it’s savagely unhealthy to have that level and even though we’re not there yet, we are dangerously close.

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Housing Wire

DECEMBER 6, 2023

Falling mortgage rates last week brought increased demand. Total home loan applications increased 2.8% for the week ending Dec. 1 compared to the previous week , according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 7.17% last week. Slower inflation and the confidence financial markets have that we are nearing the end of the Fed ’s hiking cycle has brought mortgage rates to the lowest level since August.

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