MBA Newslinks Archive

“Although this advance estimate is subject to revision, if it holds up, this faster growth should continue to provide strong support for the job and housing markets…Overall, a solid start of the year for the economy.”–Mike Fratantoni, MBA Senior Vice President and Chief Economist.

“The market volatility and decline in consumer confidence that we saw in late 2018 and early 2019 seemed to confirm what other housing indicators showed: a somewhat slow first couple of months of the year for the housing market.”–Joel Kan, MBA Associate Vice President of Economic and Industry Forecasting.

“There may be more homes available for sale over the course of the month, but that’s because more leftovers from previous months are sticking around. In truth, fewer homeowners are putting their homes on the market and buyer demand is falling back. Buyers won’t have as much competition this shopping season and can take more time finding the perfect match, if it’s out there.”–Zillow Director of Economic Research Skylar Olsen.

“The 30-year fixed mortgage rate has risen 10 basis points in three weeks, and is now at its highest level in over a month. Borrowers remain extremely sensitive to rate changes, which is why there has been a 28 percent drop in refinance applications over this three-week period. Purchase activity also declined, but remains almost 3 percent higher than a year ago. Borrowing costs have recently drifted higher because of ebbing geopolitical concerns, as well as signs of strengthening in the U.S. economy, including the recent data pointing to robust retail sales.”–MBA Chief Economist Mike Fratantoni.

“Sales have been volatile in 2019 thus far, but the average for the first three months of the year is around 5 percent lower than in 2018. We had expected this to be stronger, given the solid economy and job market, but the high end of the market has started to cool off, and the lower price tiers are still hampered by a lack of availability.”–Joel Kan, MBA Associate Vice President of Economic and Industry Forecasting.

“On a year-over-year basis, single-family starts have fallen in five of the past six months. While severe winter weather in the Midwest likely led to the significant drop in that region, the overall building trend is not heading into the right direction. There needs to be more new inventory to satisfy the solid buyer demand in most of the country, especially for the lower-priced, first-time buyer segment of the market.”–Joel Kan, MBA Associate Vice President of Economic and Industry Forecasting.

“Though sellers still largely have the upper hand, the U.S. housing market is gradually shifting in favor of buyers. The shift in favor of buyers is also happening where home values have risen the most over the past six years, suggesting that these markets may have hit an affordability ceiling.”–From a Trulia Inc. report on housing market conditions.

“Despite a healthy economy in 2018, the mortgage market suffered, as rate hikes hurt refinancing volume and low housing inventories priced some potential homebuyers out of the purchase market. For mortgage companies, there was the perfect storm of lower production revenues combined with rising expenses, which together contributed to the lowest net production income per loan since 2008.”–Marina Walsh, MBA Vice President of Industry Analysis.

“The spring buying season continues to be robust, with activity more than 7 percent higher than a year ago and up year-over-year for the ninth straight week”–Joel Kan, MBA Associate Vice President of Economic and Industry Forecasting.

“Validation of income is an important component of sound residential mortgage lending, while automation will greatly enhance the customer experience by reducing the time needed for a lender to determine how to most suitably serve their clients.”–From an MBA letter to Congress expressing support for legislation supporting reforms to the Internal Revenue Service.