Housing Wire

JULY 10, 2024

With the release of the CoreLogic 2024 Q1 Equity Insights report, which Logan discussed last week , and now the FHFA National Mortgage Database Aggregate Statistics , we have a lot of visibility into the financial position of the American homeowner. The important message in the mortgage data is that even as the economy perhaps finally slows and even as mortgage rates stay higher for longer than anyone expected, the housing market remains buoyed by an incredible cushion of very strong borrowers.

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Appraisal Buzz

JULY 26, 2024

Though home prices have plateaued in many areas, they remain near record highs across the United States. According to the opinions of LendingTree staff writer Jacob Channel, with steep housing costs, some Americans may recall the dramatic price surges of the early to mid-2000s, which preceded the Great Recession of 2007-2009. This historical comparison might incite panic, as the Great Recession led to significant home value declines and numerous foreclosures.

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Housing Wire

JULY 1, 2024

In the game of housing crisis Rochambeau, we play with income, inventory, and policy. Inventory cannot beat inadequate incomes, but better compensation policies can. The labor market has reached peak disengagement rates, partially driven by historic strikes , resignations , non-participation , and silent quitting. By splitting the workforce into five income groups to view homeownership rates, we lay bare a cause for retreat from an increasingly unfair labor market – a system with four times more

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Housing Wire

JULY 20, 2024

We finally have six weeks of numbers that hit my housing inventory growth model perfectly in 2024. Last year, with higher mortgage rates , we had zero weeks at this level so I am now giving 2024 inventory growth a grade of A. Low inventory has plagued the housing market since the pandemic, plummeting to all-time lows in March of 2022 when we only had 240,000 single-family homes available for sale.

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Housing Wire

JULY 27, 2024

One of my critical forecasts for 2024 was the growth of new listings data and active inventory, even with higher mortgage rates. However, the new listings data has slightly disappointed me. Many of my CNBC interviews , starting from late last year and just last week , have been on this theme, and new listings have grown in 2024. But, I set targets with a minimum 80,000 new listings for at least one week at the seasonal peak and that didn’t happen; the peak so far was 72,329, and now we are enter

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Housing Wire

JULY 13, 2024

In 2023, following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank , the spreads between the 30-year mortgage and 10-year yield were at their worst, leading to new cycle highs. This meant mortgage rates were significantly higher than average. However, this year, we’re seeing a different trend with the spreads: they’re improving, and mortgage rates are trending better as a result, even with the 10-year yield still above 4%.

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Housing Wire

JULY 23, 2024

Sinking sales, rapidly rising inventory and prices at all-time highs — this is the state of the market for existing homes. That’s according to June’s existing-home sales data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR), which reflect the problems that have hampered housing markets since mortgage rates began to rise in 2022. Sales of existing homes in June fell 5.4% year over year and month over month to a seasonally adjusted rate of 3.89 million.

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Housing Wire

JULY 5, 2024

With today’s jobs report and all the reports we got during this jobs week, can we finally say the Federal Reserve is winning its war against the labor market? I believe the Fed won’t pivot until the labor market breaks. That has been my position since 2022 and we are starting to see some early signs of them successfully attacking the U.S. labor market in the past few months, something I talked about on a recent HousingWire Daily podcast.

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Housing Wire

JULY 17, 2024

Higher mortgage rates have increased recession risk by targeting the one sector that always falls before every recession: residential construction workers. And higher rates are also impacting the future supply of homes, as housing permits have been in a downtrend for a while. Single-family permits fell again in today’s housing starts report. Of course, the one solution that can change the tide for this concerning downtrend is lower mortgage rates.

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Housing Wire

JULY 19, 2024

Artificial intelligence has taken the real estate industry by storm over the past two years and Coldwell Banker is no exception. On Thursday, the Anywhere Real Estate brand announced that it had equipped its exclusive marketing platform tool Listing Concierge with generative AI capabilities. Through this update, the firm says the platform will now allow agents and concierge coordinators to automate the generation of listing descriptions, captions of images and property attributes.

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Housing Wire

JULY 15, 2024

Is it darkest before the dawn? If we look at the housing market right now, sales are down, new listings are down and prices are decelerating. But if we look at the data right now, things look the most bullish they’ve been all year. Good inflation data came in last week, the bond market rallied and mortgage rates took a notable dip below 7% for the first time in months.

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Housing Wire

JULY 18, 2024

After slamming the California Association of Realtors (CAR) for a draft of its buyer representation agreement, the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) on Tuesday released its proposed criteria for evaluating buyer representation agreements. The CFA said the proposed criteria was created after the group received requests from several unnamed real estate companies.

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Housing Wire

JULY 31, 2024

Although Americans have complained about high housing costs for decades, their concerns have taken on a fevered pitch recently. At first glance, these concerns seem reasonable: home prices have increased by more than 50% since the end of 2019. This is an annual growth rate of almost 14%—far higher than the long run average rate of 4%. We’ve recently lived through an unusually rapid run-up in home prices.

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Housing Wire

JULY 25, 2024

Mr. Cooper Group has struck a deal to acquire a third-party origination (TPO) platform and $356 billion in mortgage servicing rights (MSRs), advances and subservicing contracts from Flagstar Bank , owned by New York Community Bancorp (NYCB). As part of the deal, the Dallas-based servicer and lender will pay $1.4 billion in cash, funded via available cash and drawdowns of existing MSR lines.

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Housing Wire

JULY 23, 2024

Today’s existing home sales report shows that the existing home market is now almost balanced. That might sound strange, but like most things I do, I have a model for it. We are very close to getting this balance nationally and in some markets we’re already there. I have often discussed four months of supply and active inventory between 1.52 and 1.93 million as a balanced market, but this equation has a second variable tied to today’s housing economics: affordability.

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Housing Wire

JULY 18, 2024

Mortgage applications to purchase new homes fell 16% month over month in June but rose 0.7% year over year, according to a report released Thursday by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). The data, derived from the trade group’s survey of homebuilders, is “consistent with broader declines in single-family construction and new building permits as well as typical seasonal patterns,” according to Joel Kan, vice president and deputy chief economist at the MBA.

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Housing Wire

JULY 17, 2024

There is no escaping the reality that the recent NAR/Sitzer/Burnett settlements is already changing the real estate world as we know it. Amongst the most substantial terms of that agreement is a blanket ban on the requirement that agents subscribe to MLSs to offer or accept compensation for their work. There has been quite a bit of discussion already about how this will impact the traditional residential purchase.

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Housing Wire

JULY 29, 2024

The rising supply of homes for sale has yet to put a serious dent in affordability concerns, but it might be starting to. That’s according to First American ’s monthly Real House Price Index, which shows a national price decline of 1.3% from May to June. The index measures nominal home prices and adjusts them to account for changes in household income and interest rates.

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Housing Wire

JULY 24, 2024

While there is no doubt that the Florida housing market has slowed since the height of the post-pandemic homebuying boom, the state’s condominium market has been especially hard hit, according to local agents. “It has definitely slowed,” said Cyndee Haydon , a Seminole-based agent for Future Home Realty. “Inventory has gone from a three-month supply a year ago to at least six months, so really we are into a buyers’ market now.

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Housing Wire

JULY 24, 2024

Will the Federal Reserve pivot in time to save construction workers? We have discussed this topic for some time now because, for the first time in a while, single-family permits are falling and 5-unit permits are already in recession. This is key because, traditionally, residential construction workers are the first to lose their jobs before every recession since higher mortgage rates hit housing first.

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Housing Wire

JULY 1, 2024

HousingWire is excited to announce the winners of the 2024 Women of Influence award, recognizing 100 women who are shaping and propelling the housing economy forward with their impressive achievements. This year marks the 15th year of this award program. Many of this year’s winners mentor women in the industry, paving the way for a new generation of leaders.

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Housing Wire

JULY 22, 2024

Mortgage rates have come down with recent positive inflation news. However, they are still higher than they were six months ago. I think rates are on the verge of going lower. Will consumers respond? I expect that mortgage rates under 6.75% and moving towards 6.5% will shake homebuyers into action, but we certainly can’t see it in the data yet. New pendings this week came in significantly below last year at this time.

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Buyers Inventory New Listings Sellers 488

Housing Wire

JULY 19, 2024

“A national secondary market for construction financing could allow lenders, like state housing finance agencies and banks, to provide the investment capital needed to get multifamily housing projects built and keys in families’ hands.” This is the conclusion of a new report published by the Center for Public Enterprise , a nonprofit organization that promotes the expansion of public sector projects.

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Construction Finance Development Marketing 488

Housing Wire

JULY 16, 2024

President Joe Biden released a legislative proposal on Tuesday that’s rankling the real estate industry — nationwide rent control. Biden’s new plan would cap annual rent hikes at 5% for two years for landlords who manage 50 or more rental units, which the administration said would cover 20 million units, or roughly half of all rental units in the country.

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Landlords Construction Land Management Tenants 488

Housing Wire

JULY 12, 2024

A survey of mortgage default servicing leaders revealed that foreclosures are expected to rise slowly during the second half of 2024, while ample amounts of home equity should keep many properties in loss mitigation from moving into foreclosure status. Auction.com , a marketplace for distressed home sales, released its 2024 Seller Insights report on Friday.

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Housing Wire

JULY 30, 2024

Mr. Cooper Group has priced the issuance of $750 million in debt to refinance outstanding mortgage servicing rights (MSR) facilities, an announcement that comes only four days after making public its billion-dollar acquisition of Flagstar Bank ‘s servicing assets. On Monday, the mortgage lender and servicer said that its debt offering to qualified investors through subsidiary Nationstar Mortgage Holdings will bear an annual interest rate of 6.5% that is payable semiannually.

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Housing Wire

JULY 26, 2024

The HousingWire Pulse Survey for Q3 2024 provides a detailed snapshot of current housing market sentiments and challenges faced by real estate agents, brokers, and mortgage professionals. The survey reveals a generally cautious optimism among these sectors, despite varied expectations regarding market trends over the next three months. Real estate agents have mixed outlook Agents exhibit a mixed but hopeful outlook, with nearly 29% anticipating a rise in home sales and 18% expecting a decline, l

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Housing Market Real Estate Agent Marketing Training 482

Housing Wire

JULY 26, 2024

Unless you’ve sworn off all forms of media, news, and the internet (in which case, how are you reading this?), you know the real estate industry has had quite a roller coaster ride in 2024. Buyer representation has become one of the hottest and most debated topics of the year. Amid the lawsuits and non-stop news coverage, one major question has emerged: What is buyer representation and why does it matter?

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Housing Wire

JULY 8, 2024

Nationally, the housing market indicators have been slow for several months now. There have been a few markets; however, that have defied the national trends where inventory has stayed tighter and demand keeps rolling in. Available inventory of unsold homes in the U.S. is 40% more now than last year, but some markets are just now starting to lift beyond the pandemic lows.

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Housing Wire

JULY 5, 2024

As those in or near retirement continue to proclaim a preference for aging in place , there may be challenges for people who aren’t sure about how or when they should get started on making plans. A series of home healthcare, renovation and senior care experts offer tips on ways to begin in a column published by U.S. News & World Report. For reverse mortgage clients looking to use their loan proceeds to fund the goal of aging in place, home renovations and other preparations may be requ

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Renovations Loan Officers Clients Technology 482

Housing Wire

JULY 26, 2024

The U.S. Senate appropriations committee this week approved full funding for the fiscal year 2025 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act (T-HUD), which provides $98.737 billion in total discretionary funding for agencies including Ginnie Mae. The committee voted 28-1 to approve the bill in its current form, which calls for $67 million for salaries and expenses related to the operations of the government-owned company.

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Housing Wire

JULY 25, 2024

If closed as expected, the acquisition of Flagstar Bank ‘s servicing businesses has the potential to make the mortgage servicing rights (MSR) portfolios of Mr. Cooper Group reach the $1.56 trillion mark in unpaid principal balance (UPB), consolidating the company into the top mortgage servicer in the country. Mr. Cooper executives are deploying the strategy of increasing their servicing book to take advantage of an extensive customer base that is likely to refinance their mortgages when i

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Business Mortgage Finance Marketing 476

Housing Wire

JULY 25, 2024

As the numbers of seniors carrying mortgage debt in retirement has increased, so too has the potential financial burden of a regular monthly mortgage payment. Increases in inflation and the cost of living can overwhelm those living on a fixed income, according to an article published this week in USA Today. “Retirement researchers warn that mortgage debt in retirement can be a trap,” the article explained.

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Housing Wire

JULY 25, 2024

Home insurance premiums have risen by as much as $865 this year for homeowners who originally purchased their policies in 2021. In response, the mortgage industry and federal regulators are aiming to determine the best courses of action to mitigate the financial burdens on both homeowners and insurance carriers. This is according to a new report published by Matic , which aims to assess the impacts of these realities on a highly volatile home insurance market. “The combination of climate c

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