Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 16, 2024
Three sources, who have asked to remain anonymous, have confirmed to HousingWire that the National Association of Realtors (NAR) has run out of liability insurance funds. The news about NAR’s insurance predicament began circulating late Wednesday , with industry analyst Rob Hahn highlighting the news in the Thursday edition of his email newsletter NotoriousROB.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 17, 2024
Will mortgage rates break toward 8% again, making another 2024 data line that looks like a carbon copy of 2023? It’s not part of my 2024 forecast, but since the Federal Reserve likes playing with fire , let’s look at where we are with mortgage rates and their impact on weekly housing data. Mortgage rates and the 10-year yield The 10-year yield is the key for housing in 2024.
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Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 26, 2024
The homebuilders only have 80,000 completed new homes for sale — in a country of over 336 million people with more than 157 million people working. Why so low? Well, builders are in business to make money, they’re not a charity. It’s not the safest business model either because builders take a contract to buy a home and then, from start to finish, hope that mortgage rates don’t jump on the buyer by the time the home is ready.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 5, 2024
Freddie Mac will offer a $2,500 credit for very low-income purchase borrowers to help with down payment and closing costs amid elevated interest rates and low housing supply. Effective March 1, the credit will be available for homebuyers earning 50% of area median income (AMI) or less through Freddie Mac’s Home Possible and Housing Finance Agency (HFA) Advantage mortgage products.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 4, 2024
How will mortgage rates impact seasonal inventory in 2024? Is the seasonal bottom going to happen later than I want? Maybe. It’s not what I wanted to see in 2024, but I have to be realistic since we are already in February. In the last four years, we have had abnormal seasonal inventory data, meaning that the spring inventory bottom happens later in the year.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 14, 2024
Real estate investors purchased 26.1% of the lowest-priced homes for sale in the U.S. in the fourth quarter of last year, according to a report by Redfin. It was the highest share ever recorded and was up from 24% in Q4 2022. By comparison, investors purchased 13.6% of the mid-priced homes (compared to 14.3% a year earlier) and 15.9% of the high-priced homes (compared to 15.4% a year earlier).
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Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 7, 2024
Consumer sentiment toward housing reached its highest level since March 2022, fueled by increased confidence in job security and a higher share of people who expect mortgage rates to decrease. Fannie Mae ’s home purchase sentiment index ( HPSI ) — which tracks the U.S. housing market and consumer confidence to sell or buy a home — rose 3.5 points in January to 70.7.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 13, 2024
In January, the number of properties with a foreclosure filing inched up on both a monthly and a yearly basis, according to a report released Tuesday by Attom Data. In total, 33,270 U.S. properties received a default notice, were scheduled for auction or were undergoing bank repossession last month, up 10% from December and up 5% compared to a year ago.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 28, 2024
Rocket Companies will soon shut down Rocket Pro Originate , a mortgage origination platform for real estate agents, insurance agents, tax professionals and other financial professionals who are also licensed to originate mortgages. According to a copy of an email sent to affected originators this week and reviewed by HousingWire, the Rocket Pro Originate platform — part of the company’s third-party origination channel — is to be sunset by the end of June.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 20, 2024
Are last year’s surprising home price gains evaporating? As interest rates climb again, some of the price signals are softening. Inventory is climbing vs. last year, and home prices have stayed flat for three weeks now. The price reductions data has turned less bullish for future sales also. Mortgage rates are back over 7%. We can see the impact on homebuyer demand across several of our stats.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 4, 2024
There was rampant speculation after the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting last week about the timing and number of interest rate cuts this year. In a follow-up interview on 60 Minutes on Sunday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell did not sound like someone who has pivoted. In fact, Powell believes the Fed can wait until it sees more labor damage before cutting the Federal Funds Rate aggressively or moving toward a neutral policy stance, saying again that a March rate cut is “
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 19, 2024
California looms large in any discussion of housing affordability. The largest state by population, one out of every eight Americans lives in the Golden State, but the homeownership rate is dismal. According to Ben Metcalf, managing director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley, the homeownership rate for California is 50 percentage points lower than the rest of the nation at only 44% in 2021.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 8, 2024
Mortgages rates reached their highest level since 2000 , construction costs rose and building regulations remained burdensome, leaving U.S. housing affordability near a 10-year low point at the end of last year, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). According to the fourth-quarter 2023 iteration of the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index (HOI), only 37.7% of new and existing homes sold during the final three months of last year were considered affordable to househ
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 24, 2024
Mortgage rates have risen recently but they could be much worse than they are today. As someone who doesn’t believe the Federal Reserve has pivoted and that the Fed enacted a COVID-19 housing policy to keep existing home sales depressed, It’s not shocking to me that rates are still this high, even though we had lower rates with a higher growth rate of inflation data.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 15, 2024
Among homeowners who have a mortgage escrow account, only 52% fully understand how the account works, according to survey results released Thursday by property tax services provider LERETA. More than 80% of survey respondents said they know what an escrow account is and its primary purpose — to pay property taxes and other expenses, such as homeowners insurance , flood insurance and mortgage insurance premiums.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 16, 2024
Today, housing starts fell more than anticipated , but the more important story in today’s report is that even though the apartment boom is dead, single-family permits are rising. The U.S. housing apartment boom ran into higher mortgage rates and more supply faster than anticipated, while single-family permits are still enjoying a world of sub-6% mortgage rates.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 29, 2024
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced on Thursday that the transition to new credit score requirements is expected to occur in the fourth quarter of 2025, a decision commended by the mortgage industry. That’s when the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will acquire single-family loans based on the FICO 10T and VantageScore 4.0 credit models, replacing the Classic FICO score that has been in place for decades.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 26, 2024
The cost of owning a condominium in Florida has shot up significantly in recent months, prompting a wave of homeowners to offload their properties. The cost of homeowners insurance has surged in Florida as insurance companies have grappled with significant losses due to an increase in natural disasters. The average cost of a policy increased 40% in 2023 alone, according to a report by Redfin.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 1, 2024
The Tech100 Real Estate award celebrates the most innovative and impactful organizations in housing. More than just an acknowledgment; the Tech100 award is a testament to the transformative impact these companies have made, propelling the real estate sector into new realms of efficiency, transparency and accessibility. Now in its 5th year, the Tech100 Real Estate program provides housing professionals with a comprehensive list of the most innovative and impactful organizations in the industry.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 27, 2024
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) this week announced the awarding of more than $14.5 million that will be distributed by public housing agencies (PHAs) across the country in an effort to house veterans. The funds will be distributed by the PHAs through more than 1,400 HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) vouchers.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 22, 2024
Government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) Fannie Mae announced on Thursday the appointment of Peter Akwaboah as executive vice president and chief operating officer, effective May 20, 2024. Akwaboah, who is currently serving as COO for technology and global head of innovation at Morgan Stanley , has nearly 30 years of experience in the financial services industry.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 8, 2024
People have been screaming about a housing bubble crash on social media sites for over 12 years. The truth is, U.S. housing credit looks very different than in 2005, 2006, 2007 or 2008. Homeowners have actually never looked better and the data from the Federal Reserve ‘s Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit shows why. Homeowners are not the people we need to be concerned about this time.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 13, 2024
Today’s CPI inflation report was the craziest inflation report I have ever seen in my life. The progress in inflation is still intact as we have fallen so much from last year’s growth rate, but the Owners’ Equivalent Rent of Residences (OER) inflation has diverged from all the shelter rent data in the most prominent fashion I have ever seen, which boosted this report higher than it should have been.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 12, 2024
The worst times for mortgage originations may be over as the market appears to be turning, but it’s still an unaffordable environment for younger borrowers in particular, according to a fourth-quarter 2023 lending report from Maxwell. Loan volume between the third and fourth quarters declined by 21%, but that was far less than the 37% drop from Q3 2022 to Q4 2022, the report showed.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 6, 2024
Banks reported having tightened lending standards across almost all categories of residential real estate loans over the fourth quarter of 2023 amid an elevated interest rate environment. There’s some optimism, however. With the central bank expected to cut interest rates this year, banks reported that loan demand should strengthen across residential loan categories in 2024, according to the Fed’s quarterly senior loan officer opinion survey (SLOOS) released on Monday.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 29, 2024
Mortgage rates continued to trend up this week and dampen homebuyer momentum. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.94% as of Feb. 29, an increase from last week ’s figure of 6.90%, according to Freddie Mac ’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey released on Thursday. Meanwhile, the 15-year fixed rate averaged 6.26% this week, down from 6.29% during the prior week.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 23, 2024
Although the Greater Boston area may still be plagued by persistently chilly temperatures, its housing market is still red-hot. According to data from Altos Research , the Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH metropolitan area was the hottest housing market nationwide as of Feb. 23, 2024. The metro area, which comprises Southern New Hampshire and the North Shore region of Massachusetts , had an Altos Market Action Index score of 60.59 in late February, over a full point higher than the second-place fi
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 23, 2024
We got a great existing home sales report on Thursday, but is this data already too old? Existing home sales showed a jump in sales, which was anticipated by most as we had positive, forward-looking housing data due to mortgage rates falling from 8.03% to 6.63%. However, the last four weeks have had negative trending data. This is nothing dramatic, but similar to what we saw in 2023 when mortgage rates rose from 5.99% up to 7.25%.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 21, 2024
Earlier this month, real estate investment management firm Pretium Partners raised $1 billion to acquire build-to-rent homes, bringing its total investment in the sector to $2.5 billion. The investment was needed to chip away at a pronounced national housing shortage caused by “decades of under-building and under-investment,” according to Josh Pristaw, Pretium’s head of real estate.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 7, 2024
U.S. home prices posted their highest yearly rate of appreciation since January 2023, reaching 5.5% year over year in December, according to CoreLogic ’s Home Price Index. Home prices declined by 0.1% compared to November 2023. Price appreciation slowed greatly over the past year to 3.9%, down from 14.5% in 2022, but is in line with the pre-pandemic rate of 3.9% in 2019.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 7, 2024
Mortgage demand picked up last week as lower interest rates steered homebuyers back into the market, but activity remains weaker than a year ago because of limited inventory. Mortgage applications increased by 3.7% during the week ending Feb. 2 on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association ’s (MBA) weekly mortgage applications survey.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 5, 2024
The 30-year fixed mortgage rate surpassed the 7% mark on Monday on the heels of strong economic data and the Federal Reserve signaling that it will move carefully with any future cuts to interest rates. The 30-year conforming fixed mortgage rate was at 7.04% on Mortgage News Daily and 6.91% on HousingWire’s Mortgage Rate Center. It’s the first time since December that the average 30-year fixed rate has eclipsed 7%.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 2, 2024
Redfin is back to offering refunds to homebuyers but this time under a new name. Launched on Thursday, the brokerage’s Sign & Save program provides buyers who sign up to work with a Redfin agent before their second home tour — and who purchase a property with that agent within 180 days of signing the agreement — a refund of 0.25% to 0.5% of the purchase price of the house.
Housing Wire
FEBRUARY 1, 2024
Keller Williams has decided to bow out of the Sitzer/Burnett commission lawsuit. On Thursday, the Gary Keller-helmed brokerage notified the federal court in Missouri that it had entered into a settlement agreement with the plaintiffs in the Sitzer/Burnett suit. The settlement settles all home seller lawsuits nationwide. According to Keller Williams spokesperson Darryl Frost, the firm will pay $70 million as part of the settlement agreement.
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