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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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 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 6, 2024

Will the number of homes that take a price cut this year drop below 2023 levels? Yes! If the current trends continue into the strong seasonal pricing period, we will see fewer homes that are discounted before selling. I believe this was the most overlooked housing story of the last year because even as mortgage rates rose all the way to 8% , the home price cut percentage data was always about 4% lower year over year.

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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 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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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 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 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 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 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 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 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 5, 2024

Slowing job growth doesn’t mean a recession, but today’s jobs report tells me that the significant job gains we were accustomed to in the early part of the COVID-19 recovery period are ending, which ties nicely to how I thought labor would recover after COVID. Even though the headline number on the report today beat estimates, we are entering a new phase of the economic cycle, which means you need to know where to look to get clues for a recession.

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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 19, 2024

In the ever-changing American housing landscapes, agents are well advised to stay attuned to shifts in affordability and flexibility trends, as these factors drive the growth and evolution of rental demand and can have a substantial impact on those servicing the real estate segment. For agents, staying informed about these developments is essential for strategic decision-making and client guidance in the coming year and beyond.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 9, 2024

In the ongoing struggle for attainable housing, one positive development has been the increased availability of funding options for homeowners seeking to incorporate Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) into their properties. A recent survey by Villa noted that some ~60% of rental tenants said that living in an ADU has allowed them to live in a neighborhood they would not otherwise be able to afford — that’s a big deal.

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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 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

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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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 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 19, 2024

Today, we saw existing home sales slip a bit month to month, which isn’t surprising to me as purchase application data started its positive run in November. That data line typically looks out 30-90 days for sales — it doesn’t move as fast as some people think. Since making some holiday adjustments, we have seen a seven-week positive trend in purchase apps since November.

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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 24, 2024

Government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac announced this week the release of their “Mission Index,” updating or expanding their single-family social bond framework to better communicate the goals of the index to stakeholders and investors. The GSEs issued separate announcements and a joint statement. Freddie Mac updated its single-family social bond framework which includes refinements to its mortgage-backed securities (MBS) disclosures, “designed to further support unde

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 16, 2024

Empty-nester baby boomers own roughly twice as many of the nation’s three-bedroom-plus homes as millennials with children, according to a report from Redfin published on Tuesday. The report is based on a Redfin analysis of U.S. Census data from 2022, that breaks down the share of three-bedroom-plus homes owned and occupied by each generation, by household type and size.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 17, 2024

Mortgage rates at their lowest level in three weeks led to an increase in borrowers’ demand for home loans last week, spreading some optimism in the industry in the first few weeks of 2024. To prove it, analysts are already discussing a potential refi recovery. Overall, mortgage applications rose by 10.4% in the week ending Jan. 12, compared to one week earlier, on a seasonally adjusted basis, per the Mortgage Bankers Association ‘s (MBA) weekly mortgage applications survey.

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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 31, 2024

After months of plaintiffs’ lawyers in commission lawsuits claiming that the National Association of Realtors sets real estate agent commissions, the trade group finally decided to, in its words, “set the record straight.” In a video posted on Wednesday, NAR interim CEO Nykia Wright told viewers that, “the notion that the National Association of Realtors controls what real estate professionals get paid is wholly untrue.

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