Home purchases financed with lower down payment mortgages such as those guaranteed by FHA, VA, Fannie Mae, or Freddie Mac are much more likely to face closing delays than transactions involving all cash or large down payments, according to a new survey of real estate agents. The survey of January transactions showed that home purchases financed with lower down … Read More »

  Just in time for the 2014 home buying season, attitudes towards access to mortgage credit are improving and most Americans now believe it would be easy for them to get a mortgage, according to Fannie Mae’s January National Housing Survey. Consumer attitudes regarding the ease of getting a mortgage climbed 2 percentage points to an all-time survey high of … Read More »

  The combination of tough new rules denying qualified mortgages to applicants without the ability to repay and soaring study loan debt may be doing more than anything else to shut an entire generation out of homeownership. First-time buyer market share has fallen to 27 percent in recent months.  Rising prices, thin inventories of starter homes, rising down payment requirements … Read More »

Black Knight, formerly LPS Financial Services, reports that 2013 marked the fourth consecutive year of significant, sustained improvement in the nation”s inventory of delinquent mortgages, and the second consecutive year of significant improvement for those in foreclosure. Delinquencies were just 1.5 times their pre-crisis average, with foreclosures down to 4.6 times their pre-crisis levels (declining from more than eight times … Read More »

The median FICO score for approved mortgages has fallen from 750 to 729 in the past 12 months and l30% of closed loans had an average FICO score below 700 in November 2013, compared to 22% in 2012. Read More »

A significantly smaller percentage of purchase mortgage applications have been approved since the height of the home buying season last July despite lending industry claims that lending standards have loosened. Time to close and median FICO scores are only marginally improved. Read More »

Freddie Mac Tuesday forecasted economic growth in the 2.5 to 3.0 percent range in 2014, more than 0.5 percentage points better than is projected for 2013 with the unemployment rate falling below 7 percent, perhaps by mid-2014. Read More »

The rate of borrowers 60 days or more delinquent on their mortgages dropped 23.3% in the past year, ending Q3 2013 at 4.09% from5.33% in Q3 2012of all homeowners with a mortgage according to Transunion, one of the nation’s top three credit bureaus. Read More »

Rising rates caused residential loan originations took a hit in the third quarter, and fourth quarter volume is poised for a further decline. But the top three lenders and servicers maintained their standings. Read More »

The serious delinquency rate on mortgages (90 or more days delinquent, in foreclosure or real-estate owned) peaked at 8.5 percent in January 2010 and has since declined to 5.4 percent as of July 2013, according to CoreLogic’s Insights blog. Read More »