Mortgage refinance activity may have been the true hidden culprit behind the housing crisis, according to a new report by the Urban Institute written by Laurie Goodman, codirector of UI’s Housing Finance Policy Center.Mortgage refinances were more likely to default than mortgages taken out to purchase a home “mostly because many people were treating their homes as ATMs through cash-out refinances,” Goodman notes.Eighty-four percent of gover
Household debt is topping its 2008 peak prior to the housing crash. Total household debt has risen to $12.73 trillion in the first quarter, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported Wednesday.However, Americans are handling their debt—mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, and other forms of borrowing—much better, the report shows.Americans were delinquent on 4.8 percent of total debt in the first quarter. For comparison, at the end of 2009
Just how widely can the cost of living vary from state to state? Financial website GoBankingRates.com culled 2016 data from the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center, examining six categories of living expenses: housing, groceries, utilities, transportation, health care, and miscellaneous items. The site used the data to calculate each state's overall cost of living index.Hawaii is the priciest state to live in, where cost-of-living e
The median amount of time homeowners live in their home rose to about eight and a half years in 2016, the longest tenure since Moody's Analytics and First American Financial Corporation began tracking such data in 2000. Mortgage rates may be the reason owners refuse to move, which is keeping inventory stubbornly low. And economists predict homeowners will continue to lengthen their stay in a home through the next decade, The New York Times report
Home sales reached their highest pace in a decade in the first quarter of 2017 as property prices continue to escalate, according to the National Association of REALTORS®' latest quarterly report.The median price of an existing single-family home nationally was $232,100 in the first quarter, up 6.9 percent from the same time period a year ago. Home prices rose year over year in 85 percent of the 178 metro areas analyzed.The continued inventory s
Home prices are beginning to moderate, and national wages recently increased, helping to offset rising mortgage rates and buoy housing affordability in the first quarter of 2017, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index.Sixty percent of new and existing homes sold between the beginning of January and the end of March were affordable to families earning the U.S. median income of $68,000, accordin
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage continues to hover around 4 percent for the fourth consecutive week.“Mixed economic reports over the last week have anchored the 30-year mortgage rate around the 4 percent mark,” says Sean Becketti, Freddie Mac’s chief economist.Freddie Mac reports the following national averages for the week ending May 11: 30-year fixed-rate mortgages: averaged 4.05 percent, with an average 0.5 point, rising from last week
Foreclosure filings—which include default notices, scheduled auctions, and bank repossessions—are down 23 percent from a year ago and have hit their lowest level since November 2005, according to the April 2017 U.S. Foreclosure Market report, released Thursday by ATTOM Data Solutions.“Foreclosure activity continued to search for a new post-recession floor in April thanks in large part to the performance of mortgages originated in the past s
The student housing market is hot. Sales of this market segment are outperforming the rest of the commercial sector in the first quarter. In fact, if investors continue to buy and sell student housing at the current rate, they’re on track to match the record acquisition volume of 2016.Investors purchased and sold $1.1 billion in student housing properties in the first quarter of 2017, according to CBRE, a real estate services firm.For the past
Mortgage volume is starting to rise again, and home buyers are fueling the increase.Total mortgage application volume, including for refinancings and home purchases, rose 2.4 percent last week on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported Wednesday.Home buyers are seemingly undeterred by higher home prices and the limited number of homes for sale. Mortgage applications to buy a home increased 2 percent last week and ar
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