Category: Housing Market

If falling home values is what prompted Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to tighten mortgage guidelines in 2007 and 2008, America’s mortgage applicants may get their long-awaiting loosening within the next 18 months. According to a government report, the values of homes financed with conforming mortgages rose for the third straight month in February. This is an important piece of data because as values rise on the homes against which conforming mortgages are made, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s respective loan portfolios get less risky. With less risk related to home values, there’s an opening for the agencies to assume more risk on individual borrowers. A guideline loosening would help home loan applicants that currently find themselves ineligible for conforming mortgage financing — often the least costly source for mortgage money. Pressed for profitability, it’s unlikely that Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac will loosen their respective guidelines prior to 2010, but if the Home Price Index continues to show improvement, it’s […]

With respect to housing data, news is rarely positive or negative on a universal level. There’s always two perspectives to consider, after all. The home buyer’s perspective The home seller’s perspective Usually, when data is beneficial to one group, it’s less beneficial to the other.  This is true for rising home prices, average days on market and so forth. Today, the group that gets the most benefit from data is the home seller group. Published Thursday, a government report showed that Housing Starts fell 11 percent nationwide in March and also fell short of analyst expectations.  A “Housing Start” is a new housing unit on which construction has started. The press is calling this a stumbling block for the economy, but that’s not exactly true. Fewer Housing Starts last month means that fewer new homes will come on the market later this year.  This is not necessarily bad news.  Especially if you’re planning to sell your home in the latter half of the […]

A report published Tuesday showed that home values fell nearly 3 percent in January 2009 versus the month prior and by 19 percent from last year. On the surface, data from the study looks like more bad news for housing. With deeper inspection, though, we uncover reasons to discount the report’s finding. For one, the report includes home price data from just 20 cities around the country — and they’re not the 20 most populated cities, either. For example, data from #4-ranked Houston is not included and neither is #7 San Antonio nor #10 San Jose. #54 Tampa, however, is included. Secondly, the report is two months lagging. Published March 31, its data is only accurate as of January and a lot has happened in the last 2 months. This includes a record-drop in interest rates and the introduction of an $8,000 tax credit for qualified first-time home buyers. The stimulus has helped raise home sales volume on both new […]