Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 21, 2023
Existing home prices are up 3.9% year over year, with demand near 21st-century lows. How is this possible? NAR ‘s existing home sales report on Thursday gives us insight into the why factor. The median existing-home price for all housing types in August was $407,100, an increase of 3.9% from August 2022 ($391,700). All four U.S. regions posted price increases.
Inman
SEPTEMBER 18, 2023
The deal resolves claims in both the Sitzer and Moehrl antitrust cases. The franchisor agreed to change its business practices, including "no longer forcing homesellers to pay buyer’s agents.
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Eyes on Housing
SEPTEMBER 15, 2023
Over the first seven months of 2023, the total number of single-family permits issued year-to-date (YTD) nationwide reached 527,158. On a year-over-year (YoY) basis, this is 18.4% below the July 2022 level of 645,877. Year-to-date ending in July, single-family permits declined in all four regions. The Northeast posted the lowest decline of 12.1%, while the West region reported the steepest.
Realtor
SEPTEMBER 13, 2023
-Oxford-/iStock The home-buying process is a high-stakes thrill ride full of exhilarating ups and scary downs, but unquestionably one of the most deflating moments is when the appraisal comes in significantly lower than the accepted offer. This is, to use technical real estate lingo, “a bummer.” Either you feel as though you got the raw end of a deal by paying more than the property’s worth or, if you don’t have extra cash to hand over, the deal can crumble into dust.
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.
BiggerPockets
SEPTEMBER 18, 2023
Nationwide, cities continue to impose new regulations on short-term rentals, effectively putting Airbnb hosts out of business in some areas. How can investors protect themselves?
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National Association of Realtors
SEPTEMBER 13, 2023
In May 2023, NAR surveyed its members pertaining to data collectors in the appraisal process. This report contains the findings.
Mortgagebroker News
SEPTEMBER 7, 2023
'I think that deep inside, they know the likelihood of them raising again is relatively slim – but in their language they will not admit that'
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 19, 2023
Have we finally hit the limits of the massive boom in 5-unit apartment construction that has been a positive driver of jobs and the fight against inflation since January of 2021? Tuesday’s housing starts report was a mixed bag: housing starts and completions fell with a big hit to 5-unit housing starts. However, housing permits continued to slowly increase, as we’ve seen over the last several months.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 18, 2023
Yet another national real estate brokerage firm has reached a settlement agreement in two of the major class action antitrust lawsuits facing the real estate industry. According to court documents filed on Monday, RE/MAX and the home sellers suing the firm in both the Moehrl and Sitzer/Burnett cases, which both deal with buyer brokers’ commissions, have reached a preliminary settlement agreement, settling all claims in both suits.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 18, 2023
Dark Matter Technologies , formerly Black Knight Origination Technologies, is focused on mainly two things: the smooth transition to new owners, and lowering the cost to originate loans for lenders. Executives from Dark Matter Technologies, under the Constellation Software umbrella, said that a down market is the best time to make investments in technology and prepare for the next cycle.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 7, 2023
The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) on Thursday announced that it has issued a waiver to a requirement that FHA-approved lenders flag rejected loans in the FHA Connection (FHAC) system, an effort the agency says will improve access to government-insured mortgage financing for qualified borrowers. “FHA has determined that this flag does not improve risk management and is often why other lenders will reject an applicant even when that applicant might otherwise qualify for a loan,” the agency
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.
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.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 16, 2023
What’s going on with housing inventory ? The last four weeks of new listings data have been the most volatile since mortgage rates breached 6% in 2022. One week, we had the biggest decline in new listings data all year, which might indicate Americans are giving up on listing their homes. But the next week we had the biggest increase of the year, which might show that people are rushing to list their homes.
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.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 18, 2023
For the first time in five months, homebuilder sentiment levels dropped below the key break-even measure of 50, mostly reflecting the difficulties of persistent 7% mortgage rates. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) report showed that builder confidence fell 5 points in September to a reading of 45, following a six-point drop in August.
Housing Wire
MAY 10, 2023
Did you hear that sound? That’s the entire mortgage industry shouting, “hip, hip hooray!” The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) on Wednesday announced that it would rescind a controversial loan-level pricing adjustment (LLPA) for conventional borrowers with debt-to-income (DTI) levels at or above 40%. The FHFA, which regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac , had previously delayed implementation of the DTI LLPA from May 1, 2023 to August 1, 2023 following a chorus of upset fro
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 10, 2023
Last week we saw a noticeable decline in new listings and active inventory was barely positive. Does this mean housing inventory has begun its seasonal decline? Here are the weekly numbers: Weekly active listings rose by only 343 Mortgage rates rose from 7.08% to end the week at 7.22% Purchase apps fell 2 % week to week Weekly housing inventory At first glance, it seems we’re now seeing the seasonal active inventory decline since new listings data fell noticeably and active listings slowe
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.
Housing Wire
MAY 10, 2023
The massive inflation and double-digit mortgage rates of the 1970s and early 1980s seem to haunt the Federal Reserve , which wants to cool the economy and even provoke a job-loss recession to avoid that scenario. But the latest Consumer Price Index inflation report shows how the fear of 1970s-style inflation is wildly overblown. Today’s numbers don’t look like the 1970s at all, when rent, wages, and oil shocks sent inflation running hotter than anything we have seen in recent modern-day hi
Housing Wire
APRIL 9, 2023
The housing market welcomed the news of lower mortgage rates last week after four reports showed that the labor market isn’t as tight as it seems and that the fear of 1970s-entrenched inflation was a lousy narrative. The 10-year yield finally broke below a critical technical level it had difficulty breaking for many months and we had a very small increase in inventory.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 13, 2023
The growth rate of inflation has been falling for a year, but mortgage rates are still near multi-decade highs. Why? While it is true that mortgage rates traditionally fall alongside inflation, I believed 2023 was going to be about the labor market. This was the core premise of my 2023 forecast, and so far it has worked. In my 2023 forecast , I set the range on the 10-year yield between 3.21%-4.25%, emphasizing that the bond yields can go lower than 3.21% only if the labor market breaks — which
Housing Wire
MARCH 23, 2023
If there’s one sector of the economy that benefits from the very low levels of total housing inventory , it’s the homebuilders , but for a reason you might not think. If national housing inventory were back to normal, we would have 2 to 2.5 million active listings, and these active listings would be direct competition for the builders. New homes are traditionally more expensive than existing homes, which don’t have all the bells and whistles.
Housing Wire
JUNE 22, 2023
The days on market are back to a teenager level in the existing home sales market, which means I can officially say we are back to a savagely unhealthy housing market! Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. What do I mean by savagely unhealthy? One of the critical data lines I track is the days on market, and when that breaks under 30 days it’s a dangerous sign, but when we get into the teenager level or lower, it’s a red alert.
Housing Wire
APRIL 16, 2023
The seasonal housing inventory bottom evaded us again last week as active listings fell and new listing inventory decreased. Purchase application data rose again, with more positive than negative data in 2023. Mortgage rates didn’t move much last week, but the 10-year yield rose even though inflation data was tamer than expected, and we had a weaker retail sales report number.
Housing Wire
JANUARY 9, 2023
One slice of the single-family home market that has gained traction over the past year in a topsy-turvy housing landscape is the build-for-rent sector — or BFR. Construction starts in the BFR market are being propelled by the ongoing demand for single-family rental units as high mortgage rates and limited for-sale inventory push home-purchase prospects further out of reach of many would-be homebuyers.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 11, 2023
The question many in capital markets have been asking since the GSEs were put into conservatorship is this: Without Fannie , Freddie , or the Fed , who will buy the agency MBS? Today we are seeing this play out with a shortage of MBS buyers to the tune of about $2 billion in demand per day. Supply and demand — when demand is low, MBS prices will drop at sale and the corresponding yields will rise.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 10, 2023
Rate lock volume fell 1.5% in August, the third consecutive decline as mortgage rates climbed to the highest level in more than 20 years. Overall lock volumes were down 9.5% over the last three months and were 55% below that of August 2022, according to Black Knight ’s August originations market monitor report. “Interestingly, we saw very slight upticks in both cash-out and rate/term refinance locks in August,” Andy Walden, VP of enterprise research for Black Knight, said in a statement.
Housing Wire
MAY 23, 2023
In a country with more than 330 million people, there are only 70,000 new homes available for sale today in the U.S. housing market. And with total active house listings in America near all-time lows, that is all we have for completed units for sale. The number of new homes doesn’t ever get into the millions, but we are still working our way back to the pre-COVID levels of 80,000 to 100,000.
Housing Wire
JANUARY 27, 2023
What is happening with homebuilders and the new home sales sector as we head into the spring housing market ? We have had some conflicting data points recently. On the one hand, cancelation rates have been rising. On the other hand, mortgage rates have gone down more than 1% since Oct. 20, 2022. The builders’ stock prices have done well as mortgage rates have fallen , and this illustrates the simplicity of the homebuilders’ position: their story is really about mortgage rates and moving pr
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 6, 2023
United Wholesale Mortgage (UMW) has enhanced its Safe Check program , which provides credit reports without initiating unwanted trigger lead solicitations to brokers’ competitors. In some cases, the lender will provide a hard credit report at no additional cost to borrowers. The program was launched in October 2022 to provide brokers $10 single-bureau soft credit checks for conventional loans.
Housing Wire
APRIL 20, 2023
We only have 2.6 months’ worth of housing inventory in the U.S. after coming off the single biggest home-sales crash year in history. That is where we are today in America. As expected, existing home sales fell from February to March since the previous month’s report was intense. We have a workable range for 2023 sales in the existing home sales market between 4 million and 4.6 million.
Housing Wire
JANUARY 20, 2023
The Federal Housing Finance Agency this week made a series of significant changes to loan level pricing adjustment (LLPA) fees charged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on conventional/conforming mortgages. It’s generating concern among mortgage and real estate trade groups, who fear the tweaks will hurt qualified borrowers amid an existing affordability crisis.
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