Abolishing the mortgage interest deduction would decrease the amount that homeowners would be able to pay for their homes by 17.65% and lower house prices by 19.94%, according to a new study recently accepted for publication in the Journal of Housing Economics. The study by three Belgian economists found that the MID is one of the several reasons why income … Read More »

One of strongest drivers of demand in today’s housing markets is buyers’ fear that interest rates will rise, and they will never again see rates as low as they are today.  That’s one reason the first-time buyer volume of government-guaranteed mortgages, low down payment loans like FHA and Freddie Mac’s Home Possible Advantage program surged 18 percent in April.[1] Buyers … Read More »

    Bankrate’s senior financial analyst Greg McBride isn’t sweating the new environment in mortgage rates.  December’s FOMC decision to start the upward climb one baby step at a time won’t really mean much to home sales in the larger scheme of things and most homeowners who wanted to refinance have already done so. McBride sees rates on a 30-year … Read More »

  Purchase mortgages grew at a faster rate in rural communities than in the rest of the nation last year and rural borrowers paid significantly higher rates of interest than urban or suburban home buyers in 2014, according to an analysis of recently released data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) by Keith Wiley, senior research associate at the … Read More »

More consumers are scoring 800 or above on their FICO credit scores—19.9 percent today vs. 19.6 percent just six months earlier. Nearly one in five has joined the elite FICO 800 club! At the same time, fewer are scoring below 550. In fact, there’s been a clear pattern of decline in this segment since the low point of the economy … Read More »

Quicken Loans, the nation’s second largest retail mortgage lender, today reported appraiser opinions of home values were 2.33 percent lower than homeowner estimates in July, according to the company’s national Home Price Perception Index (HPPI). Homeowners valued their homes higher than appraisers for the sixth consecutive month. The gap between homeowner estimates and appraiser opinions of value in July was … Read More »

  Freddie Mac’s economists expect the balance of the year to be a hectic one as housing markets are likely to see increasing interest rate volatility for the remainder of the year and consumers try to anticipate the Federal Reserve’s timing around rising short term interest rates.  Home buyers may encounter “bouts of affordability shock” if rates rise suddenly. With … Read More »

An analysis of trends in mortgage originations by two economists at the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank found that even though the amount of credit available for mortgages have been improving since 2013, the “credit box” of mortgage origination data indicates that the process of getting a mortgage has not loosened up. Carl Hudson, director for the Center for Real Estate … Read More »

More and more home buyers are finally getting the financing they need, according the year-end Elli Mae Originations Insights Report. But not everyone fared so well. Two out of three applications for a mortgage were approved in November and December, the highest approval rate in years. Some 67.1 percent of applications were approved, up from 31 percent two years ago … Read More »

Weekly applications for mortgages zoomed 49.1% for the week ending January 9, the biggest weekly increase recorded by the Mortgage Bankers Association since 2008.  In raw numbers the spike was even bigger. On an unadjusted basis, the Index increased 119 percent compared with the previous week. But don’t break out the bubbly quite yet. The biggest boost was in refi … Read More »