MBA Newslinks Archive

“Mortgage rates decreased last week, which led to the highest volume of refinance applications since mid-June. The slight drop in rates likely reflected concerns about weakness in certain data released earlier in the week, such as the drop in auto sales, but the market also reacted to stronger than expected job growth in Friday’s employment report.”–MBA Chief Economist Mike Fratantoni.

“In order to convince congressional leaders to quickly advance this important proposal through the Senate Banking Committee and to the Senate floor, we must increase bipartisan support for the proposal.”–Mortgage Bankers Association Senior Vice President for Legislative and Political Affairs Bill Killmer in a Call to Action supporting transitional licensing for mortgage loan originators.

“Occupancy rates are still healthy in almost all major markets. Furthermore, the trend in a select few markets such as Denver and San Jose [Calif.] may suggest these previously sluggish markets are beginning to improve from their 2016 troughs.”–Axiometrics Real Estate Analyst Carl Whitaker.

“Balancing taxpayer protection, investor returns and consumer costs is critical to realizing a more stable housing finance system going forward.”–From a new MBA paper, GSE Reform: Consumer Costs in a Reformed System, which examines MBA’s plan to build a stable foundation for the secondary mortgage market and how it would impact borrowers in the single-family market.

“Many agency eligible loan programs have been updated so that underwriting parameters for adjustable-rate mortgages more closely align with their existing fixed rate counterparts. In many cases this means higher loan to value ratios on existing ARMs loan programs, which exerted an upward pressure on the MCAI. This change affected conforming loan programs as well as agency jumbo programs, which focus on loans in high cost areas that exceed the baseline conforming loan limit of $424,000 but which are still eligible for purchase by the GSEs.”–MBA Vice President of Research and Economics Lynn Fisher.

“The burden of the one-time costs of implementing the new HMDA reporting requirements can be substantial, and the impact of that cost can be particularly substantial in the case of smaller-volume multifamily lenders. In addition, HMDA reporting of multifamily loans in particular creates the potential for privacy risk for both borrowers and lenders because, depending on the data points the Bureau elects to make public, third parties may be able to identify individual multifamily properties from HMDA data.”–From an MBA letter to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on proposed changes to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.

“Borrowing and lending backed by commercial and multifamily properties has been strong the first half of this year…as was the case during the first quarter, commercial/multifamily mortgage bankers’ originations increased despite a slowdown in the volume of sales transactions.”–MBA Vice President of Commercial Real Estate Research Jamie Woodwell.

“The past few years have not been easy for mortgage servicers as they’ve struggled with regulatory and market pressures, but still managed to deliver on customer satisfaction. Now, as that trend starts to shift and customer satisfaction levels off, it is critical that mortgage servicers continue to balance the demands of this tough marketplace with the needs of their customers.”–Craig Martin, senior director of mortgage practice with J.D. Power, Westlake Village, Calif.

“The strongest growth has been concentrated in a handful of markets, mostly in parts of the country with a vibrant tech sector. These areas have tended to experience strong job growth, increased population inflows, soaring rents and robust home price appreciation. These increases are somewhat misleading. Vast areas of the country have seen home prices recover much less.”–Mark Vitner, senior economist with Wells Fargo Securities, Charlotte, N.C.

“The Fed is embarking on a new course. Having given the market plenty of notice that they would begin shrinking their balance sheet holdings of Treasuries and [mortgage-backed securities] this year, following their July meeting, they have now indicated their intention to slow reinvestments in their securities portfolio ‘relatively soon.’ Read that as a signal that they will likely announce at their September meeting that they will begin tapering reinvestments in October.”–MBA Chief Economist Mike Fratantoni.