Housing Wire

AUGUST 1, 2024

The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage dropped to 6.62% on Thursday, a new low for 2024 that appears to be tied to the expectation that the Federal Reserve could move to cut interest rates at its next meeting in September. This is according to data reported by Mortgage News Daily. On Wednesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell indicated that a rate cut is a possibility after the September meeting if economic data continues to trend in the right direction.

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Appraisal Buzz

AUGUST 15, 2024

The U.S. foreclosure market experienced a notable uptick in July 2024, with foreclosure filings increasing by 15% from the previous month, according to the latest report from ATTOM Data, a land, property, and real estate data firm. A total of 31,929 properties across the nation faced foreclosure actions, which include default notices, scheduled auctions, or bank repossessions.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 17, 2024

Have lower mortgage rates already started to slow down housing inventory? I have a simple weekly growth model with the Altos inventory data: when rates are high, over 7.25%, inventory should grow between 11,000-17,000 weekly. This has happened six times this year and even though that would be an average inventory growth level with higher rates, it didn’t happen even once last year.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 2, 2024

Prospective borrowers with strong credit are locking in mortgages this week at the lowest rates in more than a year, loan officers and lending executives told HousingWire on Friday. A sample of more than a dozen industry professionals said they were quoting most borrowers in the high 5% to low 6% range on government loans and in the mid-6% range for conventional mortgages.

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Construction

Housing Wire

AUGUST 26, 2024

Although the industry is barely than a week into the “ new normal ,” some real estate agents and brokers are already seeing smaller buy-side commissions. “It kind of started before the [ National Association of Realtors ] settlement went into effect, but commission compression is a real thing,” Brian Huskey, the broker-owner of Montana-based ERA American Real Estate , said.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 21, 2024

Climate change has supercharged wildfires in high-risk areas across the country, and the impacts on housing could be catastrophic. A new report from CoreLogic found that 2.6 million homes across 14 western states are at risk from wildfires. California is by far the state with the most homes in danger at 1,258,748, followed by Colorado (321,294) and Texas (244,617).

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Insurance Housing Market Marketing 100

Housing Wire

AUGUST 16, 2024

One key data line that is flagging a path to recession is the loss of residential construction workers. The number of workers who build single-family and multifamily homes and do remodeling work tend to decline before every recession as higher interest rates dispositionally impact the economy through housing. While the unemployment rate has increased recently , jobless claims have yet to rise to a level that warrants a job-loss recession.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 26, 2024

Detroit-headquartered Rocket Mortgage on Monday rolled out a lender-paid 2-1 temporary buydown program for lower-income households. The program, dubbed “Welcome Home RateBreak,” is available to buyers purchasing a single-family home and earning 80% or less of their area median income (AMI). Rocket estimates the size of this segment at more than 90 million people.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 12, 2024

There are just five days to go until the business practice changes outlined in the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) nationwide commission lawsuit settlement agreement , but the trade association is not out of the lawsuit woods just yet. In a lawsuit filed on Monday by Douglas Hardy, Glenn Champion and Dylan Tent in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan , the plaintiffs claim the requirement that all Realtors and brokers in Michigan be member of NAR, their state Realtor

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Real Estate Realtors Agents Real Estate Agent 501

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Real Estate

Housing Wire

AUGUST 4, 2024

Mortgage rates moved massively lower last week without any Federal Reserve rate cuts, primarily because the labor market is getting softer. Can mortgage rates go even lower? As we can see below, when the market priced economic weakness earlier in 2024, it took the 10-year yield down toward 3.80% but didn’t break that level. So, after a softer jobs report, the question is: Can this level break and head back down to the key line in the sand I call the Gandalf line at 3.37%?

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Mortgage Inventory New Listings Housing Market 502

Housing Wire

AUGUST 5, 2024

Fears of a recession in the U.S. sent shockwaves through financial markets around the world on Monday. The Dow-Jones dropped 1,000 points by 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, the NASDAQ lost up to 6% of its value and Japanese stocks suffered their biggest crash since 1987, with the Nikkei 225 stock index dropping 12.4%. The turbulence should benefit the U.S. mortgage market , which has already seen big interest rate declines in the past week following a Fed meeting that teased forthcoming cuts to benchma

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 23, 2024

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Friday that “the time has come for policy to adjust,” signaling a cut in the federal funds rate at the September meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) as expected by monetary policy watchers. “The direction of travel is clear, and the timing and pace of rate cuts will depend on incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks,” Powell said during a speech at the Kansas City Fed’s annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 6, 2024

The downward movement in mortgage rates over the past few months accelerated last week as a cooler-than-expected jobs report and indications of a Federal Reserve rate cut led to a steep drop in loan pricing. At HousingWire ‘s Mortgage Rates Center on Tuesday, the 30-year conventional loan rate averaged 6.8% — a new low point for 2024 that was just below the 6.83% figure to start the year.

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Mortgage Government Tools Lending 495

Housing Wire

AUGUST 2, 2024

Job creation continued to slow in July as unemployment spiked, which economists say is good news for the Federal Reserve and the housing industry. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released on Friday shows that total nonfarm payroll rose by 114,000 jobs in July, below analysts’ expectations, and well below the average of monthly gain for the past 12 months of 215,000 jobs.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 22, 2024

In a lawsuit filed Thursday, real estate startup Homie Technologies claims that home seller consumers were not the only ones harmed by the real estate industry’s allegedly anticompetitive practices. Defendants in the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of Utah, include the usual cast of antitrust lawsuit characters: the National Association of Realtors (NAR), Anywhere Real Estate , Keller Williams Realty , HomeServices of America , and RE/MAX.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 29, 2024

Unsold inventory of homes on the market has been climbing in the U.S. for two years, right along with rising mortgage rates. In general, inventory rises with rates because more expensive money slows demand. When demand slows, inventory grows. According to Altos Research , there are 40% more homes on the market at the end of August 2024 than there were last year at this time.

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Inventory Real Estate Housing Market Construction 480

Housing Wire

AUGUST 10, 2024

Have lower mortgage rates positively impacted the housing demand data yet? Some people have been very disappointed with the data so far, so I wanted to take an in-depth look with this week’s tracker to see what lower rates have done to these key data lines. Let’s look at two of those data lines today to see if we can spot a positive trend.

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Mortgage Inventory Marketing Housing Market 477

Housing Wire

AUGUST 19, 2024

More than four in 10 distressed properties purchased at auction are in underserved neighborhoods with low incomes or high minority populations, neighborhoods that often have been overlooked and left behind. “Those areas that I’m now developing I grew up in. And I remember being in those areas without hot water. I remember what it’s like to have slumlords,” said Jermaine Morgan, a Columbus, Georgia-based local community developer who purchases distressed property at auction.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 14, 2024

Mortgage rates continued to recede during the past week, with the market anticipating a Federal Reserve rate cut next month and the U.S. economy showing signs of weakening. At HousingWire ‘s Mortgage Rates Center , the 30-year conforming loan rate averaged 6.66% on Wednesday. That was 11 basis points (bps) lower than a week ago and 35 bps lower than two weeks ago.

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Mortgage Tools Realtors Sellers 473

Housing Wire

AUGUST 6, 2024

Mortgage rates are dropping fast. Will potential homebuyers jump at newly cheaper payments? Or, will they wait to see if rates drop further before taking action? Mortgage rates are now the lowest they’ve been in over a year. Last year at this time, mortgage rates were rising, eventually peaking at 8% in October 2023. That late year rise in costs really slowed the housing market.

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Mortgage Inventory New Listings Contracts 475

Housing Wire

AUGUST 22, 2024

How did existing home sales grow with all the recent negative press about demand? We were told lower mortgage rates wouldn’t affect demand positively. However, if you track the forward-looking indicators, it can explain this bounce in demand. First, we have to put context into the bounce: we are working from the lowest levels ever in home sales, so any small, minor move in purchase application data can bounce sales from here.

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Inventory Housing Market Marketing Investors 467

Housing Wire

AUGUST 19, 2024

The landmark date of Aug. 17, 2024 , has come and gone, and the real estate industry is still plugging along, despite the business practice changes mandated by the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) commission lawsuit settlement agreement now being implemented nationwide. In the Greater Boston area, Linda O’Koniewski , the broker-owner of Leading Edge Real Estate , described the first few days of the business practice changes as “uneventful.

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Agents Sellers Realty Buyers 467

Housing Wire

AUGUST 20, 2024

As the cost of living remains elevated, more seniors — even those in “senior strongholds” like South Florida — are choosing to return to work. This pattern among seniors living in and around Fort Lauderdale was recently profiled in an article in the South Florida Sun Sentinel. It falls in line with a broader national trend indicating that nearly 20% of Americans ages 65 and older remain in the workforce, totaling about 10.6 million people.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 28, 2024

The typical down payment for U.S. homebuyers soared to a record high of $67,500 in June, up nearly 15% from $58,788 a year earlier, according to a new report from Redfin. The increase in down payments came despite a slowdown in home price growth (4%). Redfin economists attributed it to the quirks of the current market, where higher-priced, turnkey homes in desirable neighborhoods are more likely to sell.

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Buyers Mortgage Marketing 463

Housing Wire

AUGUST 7, 2024

The Real Brokerage isn’t tapping the brakes on its rapid expansion. During its second-quarter 2024 earnings call on Wednesday, the company said it added almost 3,000 agents from April through June, a 70% year-over-year rise and a 250% increase compared to Q2 2022. The ballooning agent count pushed brokerage revenue to $340 million, an 84% year-over-year improvement.

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Brokerage Agents Technology Housing Market 467

Housing Wire

AUGUST 1, 2024

Homebuyers often adjust their plans for the uncertainty that an election year can bring. With less than 100 days until the 2024 election, a majority of buyers are taking note. That’s according to survey results released Thursday by Veterans United Home Loans, which show that 60% of prospective buyers are taking the election into account. Even more dramatic is that 38% of homebuyers are pausing their search until after Election Day.

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Housing Market Finance Buyers Marketing 468

Housing Wire

AUGUST 6, 2024

UWM Holdings Corp. , the parent of United Wholesale Mortgage , has adopted a strategy that differs from its peers to take advantage of a business landscape that is expected to include lower mortgage rates and more refinance activity. The Pontiac, Michigan-based company has opportunistically sold mortgage servicing rights (MSRs) with higher coupons to deleverage its balance sheet and invest in the origination business — for example, by offering incentives on some refi loans.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 20, 2024

Keller Williams is doing its best to live up to its reputation as a brokerage firm heavy on agent education. On Monday, the firm announced the launch of an agent resource webpage known as “Buyer and Seller Agent Tools to Thrive.” The resource guide is focused on helping agents navigate the business practice changes outlined in the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) commission lawsuit settlement agreement.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 1, 2024

Rapidly rising home prices are bad news for prospective buyers, but they’re proving quite beneficial for homeowner equity. That’s according to a new report from ATTOM Data Solutions that found that in the second quarter of 2024, 49.2% of mortgaged homes were “equity-rich,” defined as having a loan balance of less than half of the estimated market value of those homes.

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Market Value Home Value Housing Market Buyers 463

Housing Wire

AUGUST 4, 2024

The Federal Reserve won’t pivot on rates until the labor market breaks and it will keep financial conditions as tight as possible until that happens — this has been my theme since 2022. Friday’s jobs report had one number which got people talking about a possible recession: the 4.3% unemployment rate. Now, historically speaking, that is a low unemployment rate, but it has moved up from the recent lows of 3.5%.

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Transportation Construction Marketing Contracts 462

Housing Wire

AUGUST 28, 2024

While some in the real estate industry are expecting to see a decline in the number of buyer’s agents as a result of the National Association of Realtors ‘ (NAR) nationwide commission lawsuit settlement agreement , others have taken it a step further and are betting their companies on it. Meet the AI real estate agent. Unlike human agents, these AI agents really are available 24/7 and will quickly answer every little question you have about the homebuying process.

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Real Estate Agent Real Estate Agents Modernization 456

Housing Wire

AUGUST 12, 2024

More evidence is emerging that the recent decline in mortgage rates is prompting more borrowers to refinance. In its July 2024 Market Advantage report released on Monday, mortgage technology firm Optimal Blue reported that refinance demand, measured by the level of locked loans, grew to its highest point since September 2022. Data from HousingWire ‘s Mortgage Rates Center shows that rates were in the midst of an upswing in September 2022, with the average rate for 30-year conventional loan

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