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Finance and Economy Archive
Only 23 percent of renters living in single family homes—where more than half the nation’s renters live today—believe that renting makes more sense than buying a home.
Yet difficulty getting financing, including bad credit, would keep most of them—53 percent—from buying a home if they were going to move. Seventy-three percent of single-family renters say it would be difficult for them to get a home mortgage, with 33 percent citing their credit history as the biggest obstacle to getting financing.
Short sales will remain strong for the next several years as foreclosure inventories timelines grow even longer, according to the chief operating officer of Equator, a software platform for default servicers.
Greg Rand (
@gsrand) (http://twitter.com/gsrand), CEO of
OwnAmerica (http://ownamerica.com) hosts Rand on Real Estate on 770 WABC; this week he discusses the White House's announcement and breaks it down. “It sounds good,” Rand says, “but it's more important to watch what they DO in Washington more than what they say. Stay tuned. This could be the first government housing program that actually works, if they listen to the private sector.”
In the second quarter of 2011, fixed-rate loans accounted for about 95 percent of refinance loans, based on the Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) Quarterly Product Transition Report released yesterday. Refinancing borrowers clearly preferred fixed-rate loans,
Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) recently released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®), showing mortgage rates continuing to decline with the 30-year fixed averaging 4.32 percent marking a new low for 2011, and the 15-year fixed,
The national mortgage delinquency rate (the rate of borrowers 60 or more days past due) decreased for the sixth consecutive quarter, dropping to 5.82 percent at the end of the second quarter in 2011 according to a quarterly analysis of credit-active U.S. consumers by TransUnion.
Although mortgage delinquencies were expected to continue to drop, the Q2 2011 TransUnion data released recently shows mortgage delinquency rates improved on a quarterly basis by 5.98 percent, more than any time since the recession officially ended two years ago.
Difficulties getting financing are increasingly keeping first-time buyers from buying homes in spite of very affordable prices in most markets. One serious result has been a slowing of the absorption of foreclosures and short sales.
The latest quarter report from the National Association of REALTORS® found that first-time buyers purchased only 35 percent of homes in the second quarter, down from 46 percent in the second quarter of 2010, which was the height of the first-time buyer tax credit.
Median existing-home prices declined modestly in the second quarter with 27 percent of metropolitan areas experiencing price gains from a year ago, while state home sales declined from the second quarter of 2010, according to the latest quarterly report
RISMEDIA, August 11, 2011—Mortgage rates continued to move lower as investor concerns over the health of the U.S. economy increased, reports mortgage rate research website, ForTheBestRate.com. Interest rates advertised on the site have dropped
RISMEDIA, August 11, 2011—Lost in the recent slew of negative homeownership announcements was a piece of good news for real estate professionals and landlords alike.
RISMEDIA, August 11, 2011—The average rate for a 15-year fixed loan dropped to 3.54 percent last week from 3.66 percent the week before, according to Freddie Mac—the lowest result since 1991.
RISMEDIA, August 10, 2011—U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Department of the Treasury recently released the July edition of the Obama Administration's Housing Scorecard—a comprehensive report on the nation’s
RISMEDIA, August 10, 2011—Second quarter 2011 commercial and multifamily mortgage loan originations were 107 percent higher than during the same period last year and 52 percent higher than the revised figures for the first quarter of 2011,
RISMEDIA, August 10, 2011—June prices of non-distress sale homes were down only 1.1 percent from June 2010, and improvement over May, when prices were 2.1 percent below the previous year.
CoreLogic® Home Price Index also showed its third consecutive month-over-month increase, including distress sales, increasing by 0.7 percent in June 2011 compared to May 2011.
However, June national home prices, including distressed sales, were still 6.8 percent lower than June 2010 after declining by 6.7 percent in May 2011 compared to May 2010. Distressed sales include short sales and real estate owned (REO) transactions.
RISMEDIA, August 9, 2011—National average home prices in June were still 7.9 percent below a year ago, which was the height of the boomlet spawned by the tax credit. However, prices are still up 4.1 percent over the first quarter.
