Housing Wire

MARCH 15, 2024

The National Association of Realtors has agreed to pay $418 million in damages to settle the commission lawsuits. The story was first reported by the New York Times. NAR’s legal counsel approved the settlement agreement early Friday morning. It has yet to be filed in court. Lawyers for the trade organization told the Times that they anticipate the settlement will be filed in the coming weeks, however it will still be subject to court approval.

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Sacramento Appraisal Blog

MARCH 14, 2024

I heard the best description of the market this week. It made me chuckle, and I hope you like it too. I mean, how can you go wrong when relating the housing market to nachos? I also have some emerging trends to talk about below. UPCOMING SPEAKING GIGS: 3/19/24 WCR Gold Country (details here) 3/21/24 2024 […] The post The housing market is like nachos first appeared on Sacramento Appraisal Blog.

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Appraisal Buzz

MARCH 25, 2024

The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) fourth-quarter 2023 Foreclosure Prevention and Refinance Report shows that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac completed 43,903 foreclosure prevention actions during the last three months of 2023, raising the total number of homeowners who have been helped to 6,905,703 since the start of conservatorships in September 2008.

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Housing Wire

MARCH 2, 2024

The mortgage rate lockdown premise says that if rates rise, inventory can’t grow meaningfully. The idea is that nobody will trade their low mortgage rates to buy another home — even though this happened every week last year. Of course, I have a different view. My podcast partner, Editor in Chief Sarah Wheeler, disagrees, along with many others. You can see our debate on this topic here.

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Inventory Mortgage New Listings Housing Market 534

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Construction

Housing Wire

MARCH 7, 2024

The White House announced that President Joe Biden will call on lawmakers in the House of Representatives and the Senate to address a series of housing issues in his State of the Union address, which will be delivered to a joint session of Congress and televised nationally on Thursday night. In the address, the president will call for a $10,000 tax credit for both first-time homebuyers and people who sell their starter homes; the construction and renovation of more than 2 million additional home

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Housing Wire

MARCH 23, 2024

Mortgage rates had a chance to break to new highs this year, but the Federal Reserve took a moderate tone at the last Fed meeting. We saw the benefit of lower mortgage rates with the last two existing home sales reports, which showed growth. Then mortgage rates rose, facilitating five weeks of negative purchase application data. As rates were hitting year-to-date highs, the fear was that the Fed would go hawkish in their March meeting, which could push mortgage rates toward 8% and tank 2024 dema

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Housing Wire

MARCH 15, 2024

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) settlement of commission lawsuits nationwide is expected to force mortgage lenders and loan officers to find new ways of approaching listing agents and borrowers, give LOs a more significant role in the home-buying process, and encourage housing professionals to pursue dual-licensing, industry experts told HousingWire.

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Housing Wire

MARCH 11, 2024

Last fall when people were still expecting mortgage rates to be falling this year, it was common to assume rates would be in the low 6s or 5s this year and people asked me if lower rates would bring a flood of inventory. The suspicion was that there were a bunch of sellers who were waiting to sell: Once rates fell these sellers would come rushing back to this real estate market and we’d finally see inventory grow.

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Housing Wire

MARCH 26, 2024

Three agents formerly affiliated with Keller Williams Realty — Jerri L. Moulder, David L. Bueker and Robert E. Hill — have taken legal action against the real estate brokerage by filing three separate class-action lawsuits, Inman first reported on Tuesday. The lawsuits contest alterations made to Keller Williams’ profit-sharing program, with one of them seeking a court order to halt further payouts until the case concludes.

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Real Estate

Housing Wire

MARCH 3, 2024

First-time homebuyers made up 55% of agency purchase mortgages in 2023, according to Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) eMBS data, the highest such share in the 10 years ICE has been tracking the metric. A record 47% of government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) purchase loans in 2023 came from first-time homebuyers, a number that’s been trending gradually higher throughout the past decade.

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Housing Wire

MARCH 28, 2024

Florida is reckoning with a severe homeowners insurance crisis. The recent surge in both the frequency and intensity of hurricanes that have battered the state has prompted numerous insurers and reinsurers to exit the market , leaving Florida homeowners grappling with skyrocketing premiums and limited coverage options. According to the Insurance Information Institute , this exodus has resulted in Florida homeowners paying an average of nearly $4,000 a year in insurance , which is nearly three ti

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Housing Wire

MARCH 20, 2024

Those too young to remember the wild west of real estate believe that real estate commissions have always been evenly split between seller’s and buyer’s agents, with each receiving a portion of the sale price. This misconception obscures the reality that, historically, buyers lacked formal representation. Initially, the entire commission percentage was pocketed by the listing agent, who solely represented the seller’s interests.

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Housing Wire

MARCH 25, 2024

Last week was a pretty strong week for all the housing numbers. New supply and sales numbers keep climbing — both weekly and over last year. Home prices had a slight increase this week across the board. What does this means for home prices this spring? As the data comes in each week this year, I’ve been more optimistic about home sales volume growth than for home-price growth.

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Housing Wire

MARCH 12, 2024

The CPI report came out Tuesday, and the headline number showed a 12-month inflation of 3.2%. The running average of CPI going back to 1914 has been 3.3%. So, what should we take away from this number, seeing that market participants are still worried about 1970s inflation and some don’t want to see any rate cuts this year? Fed presidents and others have cited the fear of 1970s-style entrenched inflation as a reason they hiked rates so fast and are being careful as they consider rate cuts.

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Housing Wire

MARCH 8, 2024

Everyone was waiting to see if this week’s jobs report would send mortgage rates higher, which is what happened last month. Instead, the 10-year yield had a muted response after the headline number beat estimates, but we have negative job revisions from previous months. The Federal Reserve ’s fear of wage growth spiraling out of control hasn’t materialized for over two years now and the unemployment rate ticked up to 3.9%.

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Housing Wire

MARCH 4, 2024

At HousingWire , we have a debate about whether home sellers will freeze up again this year as mortgage rates stay stubbornly high. We’ve had seller growth for 18 weeks in a row. I’ve previously been confident that trend will continue. A couple months ago, when rates were in the 6s still, I suggested that we could see 15% home sales growth this year.

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Housing Wire

MARCH 22, 2024

There is no doubt that the cooperative compensation structure changes outlined in the National Association of Realtors’ commission lawsuits settlement agreement will generate massive changes in the real estate industry, but those are not the only changes mandated by the terms of the agreement. Based on NAR’s settlement, agents working with buyers will need a signed buyer representation agreement starting in mid-July, pending final court approval of the settlement.

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Housing Wire

MARCH 26, 2024

Mortgage rates rose this week as the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note inched up. As of Monday, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note was about 4.25%, according to Tradeweb, up from 3.86% at the end of last year. As a result, HousingWire’s Mortgage Rates Center showed the average 30-year fixed rate for conventional loans at 7.16% on Tuesday, up from 7.07% one week earlier.

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Housing Wire

MARCH 8, 2024

Consumer sentiment toward housing inched higher for a third consecutive month as respondents feel increasingly optimistic about home selling conditions. Fannie Mae ’s Home Purchase Sentiment Index ( HPSI ), which tracks the U.S. housing market and consumer confidence to buy or sell a home, rose 2.1 points in February to 72.8. The full index is up 14.8 points from one year ago.

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Housing Wire

MARCH 20, 2024

Last week, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) announced a settlement agreement in the Sitzer Burnett case that would take effect in July. For those who missed the declarations that this outcome will render transacting real estate almost free, protect consumers and make homeownership affordable once again, the settlement does none of that. Here’s the truth.

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Sellers Real Estate Realtors Realty 482

Housing Wire

MARCH 22, 2024

The landscape for home flipping across the country was challenging in 2023 as fewer single-family homes and condominiums were flipped and investment returns on these projects declined. A total of 308,922 single-family homes and condos were flipped in 2023, down 29.3% from the 436,807 flips in 2022. This marked the largest annualized decline for the sector since 2008, according to recently released report from real estate data analytics company Attom.

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Housing Wire

MARCH 22, 2024

In real estate brokerage, growth is the name of the game and for 2024 (based on 2023 data), The Real Brokerage and The Agency are winning that game. Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices RW Towne Realty also had a strong showing. The 2023 housing market was a period of uncertainty with low inventory and industry challenges. For all of 2023, the Relitix Agent Movement Index , showed a marked decrease in agent movement.

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Housing Wire

MARCH 27, 2024

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) urged the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) to revise its policies that ban veterans from paying broker commissions, an issue that is gaining attention following the NAR’s landmark $418 million settlement. Earlier this month, the NAR announced the settlement of various lawsuits filed by home sellers, which allege that the real estate industry colluded to keep agent commissions artificially high at 5% to 6% of a home’s sale price.

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Housing Wire

MARCH 12, 2024

Despite elevated interest rates and tight inventory, the national Hispanic homeownership rate reached 49.5% in 2023, with a net gain of 377,000 Hispanic owner households from the previous year. In total, more than 9.5 million Hispanic households own their home, the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals ( NAHREP ) said in its 2023 State of Hispanic Homeownership Report released on Tuesday.

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Housing Wire

MARCH 21, 2024

Today’s existing home sales report was a massive beat , similar to what happened last year in this month. Will this mark the high point for sales this year like it did in 2023? Unless mortgage rates go lower, that’s what we should expect, because that’s what happened last year. When mortgage rates headed lower at the end of 2022 into 2023, we had 12 weeks of positive weekly purchase application data.

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Inventory Housing Market Mortgage Marketing 470

Housing Wire

MARCH 14, 2024

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is being sued in federal court over accusations that it failed to refund nearly $385 million in mortgage insurance premiums (MIP) to borrowers over a period of more than two decades. The lawsuit was previously reported by National Mortgage News and Law360. The proposed class-action lawsuit brought by Florida resident Tricia Sarmiento claims that HUD has failed to issue refunds tied to MIP payments on mortgages backed by the Federal Housi

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Housing Wire

MARCH 20, 2024

The Federal Reserve ’s Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC) held its short-term policy interest rate steady at a range of 5.25% to 5.5% for a fifth straight meeting on Wednesday. “The Committee does not expect it will be appropriate to reduce the target range until it has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2%,” according to the FOMC statement. “In addition, the Committee will continue reducing its holdings of Treasury securities and agency de

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Housing Wire

MARCH 22, 2024

Home equity levels among homeowners aged 62 and older are at record levels following the end of the pandemic. As a result, reverse mortgages may no longer be considered a “loan of last resort” as financial planners aim to highlight their uses as part of a comprehensive financial plan in retirement. This is according to a column published this week by Investment News, soliciting input from planner professionals well known to the reverse mortgage business, including Wade Pfau.

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Housing Wire

MARCH 8, 2024

In remarks made Thursday to the Senate Banking Committee this week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said he expects some U.S. banks to fail in the coming months because of declining values and defaults in their commercial real estate loan portfolios. According to reporting by multiple outlets, including The Hill , Powell indicated that the risk is tied to small and midsized banks, and there is no systemic risk to the banking sector posed by the potential collapse of major institutions.

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Housing Wire

MARCH 13, 2024

In a world enamored with all things digital and AI , one would think that real estate agents don’t serve any purpose, but it’s totally untrue. Moreover, the concept remains a central theme of some arguments contained in the plethora of lawsuits that are now carpet bombing the real estate industry. Despite the claims, a critically important truth is missing.

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Housing Wire

MARCH 15, 2024

Prospective homebuyers have more options to choose from in the housing market, which could help spur sales this spring. Mortgage demand has been on the rise for two weeks in a row. Inventory has been trending upward for the last two years despite persistently high mortgage rates, Mike Simonsen, president and founder of Altos Research , wrote on Monday.

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Housing Wire

MARCH 6, 2024

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell reiterated Wednesday that the central bank won’t be applying any cuts to benchmark interest rates until it’s sure that inflation is under control. In his prepared testimony to the House Financial Services Committee, Powell hinted at rate cuts “at some point this year” but kept the timing under wraps. Powell emphasized the Fed’s commitment to its dual mandate of bolstering employment and keeping consumer prices stable.

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