Housing Wire

JANUARY 28, 2024

Housing demand is up and it’s time to track the spring housing data and see what the selling season will bring. As I always stress, we are working from the lowest bar ever with demand, so let’s add historical context to the data. But, even with mortgage rates higher this year than last year, demand is rising. Purchase application data As we get closer to the end of the first month of 2024, forward-looking purchase application data looks good.

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Sacramento Appraisal Blog

JANUARY 23, 2024

The housing market has 80s vibes. The 90s are back for clothing, but it’s the early 1980s when it comes to housing narratives. Today, I want to show some headlines from over forty years ago, and I’d love to hear your take. UPCOMING (PUBLIC) SPEAKING GIGS: 01/31/24 Joel Wright & Mike Gobbi Event 9am (on […] The post The housing market has 80s vibes first appeared on Sacramento Appraisal Blog.

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Inman

JANUARY 29, 2024

A buyer with a monthly budget of $3,000 can now purchase a home worth approximately $453,000 — up from $416,000 in October when mortgage rates reached a record of 7.8 percent, according to Redfin.

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George Dell

JANUARY 24, 2024

Time adjustments are not required. Unless they are needed. Appraisal time adjustments are also labeled as “market conditions” adjustments. Or, more recently in Evidence Based Valuation, “Market Price Indexing (MPI)©”. The FHFA blog post of 1/16/2024 defines “underappraisals” as those loan appraisals which come in below the contract price. The rising market […] The post No Time Adjustments!?

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Construction

Housing Wire

JANUARY 19, 2024

Fannie Mae has a rosy outlook for mortgage rates. The government sponsored enterprise is projecting that rates will drop below 6% by the end of 2024, which in turn will boost refi volumes and help thaw the existing home sales market. Following years of volatility in mortgage rates, the housing market will begin its gradual return to a more normal balance in 2024.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 20, 2024

Housing inventory, new listing data and mortgage rates are all rising, but the price cut data percentages are falling. Traditionally at this time of year purchase apps rise and the number of price cuts fall. However, at the current trend, we will break below the lows in the price cut percentage data that we saw in 2023 in the spring of this year. I will watch for rising mortgage rates to see if they change the weekly data.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 18, 2024

Mortgage rates continued their descent this week to mark their lowest level since May 2023, welcome news for homebuyers who have been waiting on the sidelines for rates to drop. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.6% as of Jan. 11, a decrease from last week’s 6.66%, according to Freddie Mac ‘s Primary Mortgage Market Survey released on Thursday.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 2, 2024

The last week of data for the year U.S. real estate market is in and it may surprise you, but pretty much all the signals for housing in 2024 are pointing for growth now. Inventory is slowly but steadily increasing over last year, which means slightly more options for buyers this spring. Sales rates are climbing. We have more homes going into contract each week now than we did a year ago — supply and demand are climbing together.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 1, 2024

The 2023 housing market faced one of the same roadblocks we saw in 2022: mortgage rates were too high for home sales growth. Now that we’re in 2024, the Federal Reserve ‘s rate hike cycle is over, so let’s look at what that means for housing demand and home prices. However, a yearly forecast has limitations and in this crazy housing and economic cycle, if people give you a yearly forecast without guidance as variables change, you’ll be dealing with stale data.

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Real Estate

Housing Wire

JANUARY 13, 2024

Last week, housing inventory grew and the number of price cuts fell, which is expected at this time of the year. I hope the next thing we see is housing inventory grow at the level it typically does in January or February instead of being delayed until March or April. Last year at this time, inventory rose week to week and I was hopeful for a typical spring inventory year, but the seasonal bottom didn’t actually happen until April 14.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 2, 2024

The “ silver tsunami ” — a colloquialism referring to aging Americans changing their housing arrangements to accommodate aging — could have more of an impact on the housing market this year, according to analyst Meredith Whitney in a conversation with Yahoo Finance. “[T]he other major demographic trend you see is the aging of America,” Whitney said.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 8, 2024

Top-15 U.S. mortgage lender loanDepot confirmed Monday morning that it is the industry’s latest cyberattack victim. The incident has brought loanDepot’s systems down. The California-based lender, which originated roughly $17 billion in mortgage loans from January to September 2023, said it has launched an investigation with the support of cybersecurity experts.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 25, 2024

People say that housing leads the economy into a recession: this is true when new home sales and housing permits fall together. When that happens, the builders start laying off workers before the national economy goes into a recession. This is one reason I raised my fifth recession red flag for Housing on June 16, 2022 as I saw that higher mortgage rates would impact new home sales and housing permits.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 8, 2024

Based on the trends we can see after the start of the year, I’ll project 2024 will see about 15% home sales growth over 2023. Home prices will be up this year by a few percentage points, also. These are very clear trends as we start the new year. 2022 started insanely strong and weakened rapidly in the second quarter. 2023 started with recovery, but slowed down in Q3 as mortgage rates hit 8%.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 9, 2024

Among the numerous issues that retirement preparation can present to those near the end of their careers, long-term care (LTC) provides an increasingly common discussion point. One potential product that could assist in paying for LTC and its insurance could be a reverse mortgage, according to personal finance publication Kiplinger. LTC is already an expensive prospect and is projected to become a more common necessity as the U.S. population grows older in the coming years.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 23, 2024

Fifty-five percent of surveyed baby boomers plan to remain in their existing homes as they age, but less than a quarter of those surveyed have any plans to renovate their homes to more safely and easily accommodate natural changes that come with aging. This is according to a new report from home improvement services company Leaf Home and market research firm Morning Consult , which enlisted responses from 1,001 baby boomer homeowners (aged 59–77) and 1,001 millennials (aged 27–42) in late Decemb

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 11, 2024

Inflation came in hotter than expected on Thursday, but we are still talking about rate cuts in 2024! The 10-year yield had a mild reaction to today’s data , increasing a few basis points early. It’s now at 3.98% , a far cry from 5.04% as we saw last year. This, while jobless claims data is still historically low. As I have stressed time and time again, when the market believes the Federal Reserve is done hiking rates, the markets make a big move lower with the 10-year yield and mortgage r

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 24, 2024

Fannie Mae has announced updates to its HomeReady product, including a temporary $2,500 credit for very low-income purchase borrowers to use for down payment and closing costs. Another step the government-sponsored enterprise took was to enhance the best efforts commitments on HomeReady loans. It allows lenders to lock in margins and reduce hedging costs.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 18, 2024

Lights, camera, lawsuit! A copycat commission lawsuit has been filed in Los Angeles. The suit, known as Fierro, after its lead plaintiff Gael Fierro, a Californian home seller, accuses the real estate industry of colluding to artificially inflate real estate agent commissions. It was filed on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Patrick Thurber, a California home seller, is an additional named plaintiff in the suit.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 8, 2024

National Association of Realtors President Tracy Kasper has resigned following a threat made against her, the trade group said Monday. “Kasper informed NAR’s Leadership Team that she recently received a threat to disclose a past personal, non-financial matter unless she compromised her position at NAR,” NAR said in a written statement. “She refused to do so and instead reported the threat to law enforcement.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 24, 2024

Mortgage demand continued to increase last week, as seen in an uptick in purchase activity. Mortgage applications rose by 3.7% in the week ending Jan. 19 compared to one week earlier on a seasonally adjusted basis, per the Mortgage Bankers Association ‘s (MBA) weekly mortgage applications survey. “Conventional and FHA purchase applications drove most of the increase last week as some buyers moved to act early this season,” Joel Kan , MBA’s vice president and deputy chief economist, said in a st

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 12, 2024

Despite the still-challenging rate environment, some homeowners might opt to bite the bullet and give up their low rate to move, according to a Redfin study. Nationwide, the share of homeowners with relatively low rates has fallen modestly from a record high of 92.8% in mid-2022. In the third quarter of 2023, 88.5% of U.S. homeowners with mortgages had an interest rate below 6%.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 9, 2024

The wave of commission lawsuits have arrived in Arizona. In a copycat suit filed last Friday in U.S. District Court in Arizona, Joseph Masiello, an Arizona resident and home seller, accuses several real estate companies of colluding to artificially inflate real estate agent commissions. Masiello sold a home on an Arizona MLS through HomeSmart “in or about October 2021.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 17, 2024

David Stevens, a legend of the mortgage banking industry who helmed the Federal Housing Agency and the Mortgage Bankers Association in a career that spanned four decades, has died. “The real estate finance community mourns the loss today of one of its great leaders and fiercest advocates,” current MBA President Bob Broeksmit said in a statement Wednesday morning.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 29, 2024

After nearly three years of doom and gloom in the mortgage industry, housing experts — including Fannie Mae economists — are expecting interest rates to ease. While Fannie Mae expects mortgage rates to drop to below 6% by the end of this year, the government-sponsored enterprise also forecasts that if there isn’t significant supply growth and buyer demographics remain strong, home prices will rise once again.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 26, 2024

Pending home sales rose 8.3% month over month in December, according to the newest data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR). It was the largest monthly jump in pending home sales since 2020. NAR’s Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI) increased to 77.3 in December, up from 71.6 in November. On a year-over-year basis, pending sales were up 1.3%.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 30, 2024

The U.S. housing market has reached its least affordable point in decades and housing agencies have increasingly rolled out homebuyer assistance programs to tackle this issue. A total of 135 new homebuyer assistance programs were introduced in 2023, a 6% increase over the previous year. This brought the nationwide tally up to 2,294, according to Down Payment Resource’s fourth-quarter Homeownership Program Index (HPI) report.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 25, 2024

Homeowners in California now have even fewer choices in homeowners insurance carriers. The Hartford Financial Services Group , better known as The Hartford, announced Wednesday that it would no longer issue new homeowners insurance policies in California starting in February 2024. The firm noted that this change would also impact The Hartford’s joint homeowners insurance program with AARP.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 10, 2024

Despite an uptick in mortgage rates at the beginning of 2024, mortgage demand surged after adjusting for the holiday. Mortgage applications increased 9.9% for the week ending Jan. 5 compared to one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). The 30-year fixed mortgage rate averaged 6.62% as of Jan. 4, according to Freddie Mac ’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 23, 2024

Mauricio Umansky, founder of The Agency and star of Buying Beverly Hills, and Compass agent and NAR Accountability Project founder Jason Haber are making good on a promise to explore a real estate professional trade organization alternative to the National Association of Realtors. The two industry professionals are asking agents to “Trade Up” and give their new group, the American Real Estate Association, a try.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 5, 2024

Top-10 mortgage lender Guaranteed Rate has filed a lawsuit against retail rival New American Funding over poaching. But this isn’t your standard poaching lawsuit: G-Rate alleges that NAF has wooed at least 30 employees since early 2023 via illegal loan officer compensation practices. Despite the rise in poaching lawsuits in a competitive market, it’s the first time a large lender has publicly accused a competitor of violating the LO comp rule by allowing their salesforce to manipula

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 12, 2024

The U.S. Supreme Co urt last week scheduled oral arguments for seven pending cases to take place in February, including one that will decide whether “the National Bank Act preempts the application of state escrow-interest laws to national banks,” according to a publication of the argument schedule and reporting at SCOTUSblog. The court will decide whether or not national banks will be required to follow state-level laws governing escrow accounts’ accumulation of interest.

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