MBA Newslinks Archive

“Last year ended with a bang with home prices up over 7 percent nationally, led largely by major metro areas. We expect prices to continue to rise just under 5 percent in 2017 buoyed by lack of supply and continued high demand.”–Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic, Irvine, Calif.

“Mortgage cures–delinquent borrowers who bring themselves back to current status–correspondingly spike in February and March as well, suggesting that some portion of Americans are using their tax refunds to make past-due payments on their mortgages.”–Black Knight Data & Analytics Executive Vice President Ben Graboske.

“Homes transition quite frequently, with rising prices shifting rental units into the owner-occupied sector and falling prices having the opposite effect. Over a decade, roughly 2 percent of the housing stock moves from owner to rental occupancy.”–Stuart Rosenthal, professor of economics at Syracuse University and author of a Research Institute for Housing America study, Owned Now Rented Later? Housing Stock Transitions and Market Dynamics.

“This simply underscores what any industry veteran knows: originators like to change companies.”–STRATMOR Senior Partner Matt Lind, on a survey of nearly 17,000 retail originators showing nearly 60 percent of originators had been with their current company for less than two years.

“The overall complexity of the mortgage industry has gone up exponentially. Blockchain provides a simple, chronological order for ensuring security.”–Adi Ghosh, director of Sapient Global Markets, Boston.

“Today’s paper is intended to provide thoughtful recommendations on how to reform the GSEs while ensuring a healthy, robust secondary mortgage market emerges for both single-family and multifamily mortgages. The U.S. mortgage market requires global capital in order to maintain adequate liquidity through all economic cycles. International and institutional investors will only fill that role if there is an explicit government guarantee on the securities, something that can only be obtained by congressional action.”–MBA Chairman Rodrigo Lopez, CMB, on a new MBA paper advocating secondary mortgage market reform.

“We’ve seen a permanent shift in consumer behavior. We buy experiences now. We’re not moving as much; we’re spending more on home improvements–on experiences that we can enjoy.”–Sarah Quinlan, senior vice president and group head of market insights with MasterCard Advisors, New York.

“MBA has been at the forefront of GSE reform. The conservatorship was never intended as a full time solution. And with a new Administration and a new Congress, we have an opportunity to move the process forward.”–MBA Vice Chairman Chris George.

“You have a number of Federal Reserve officials speaking in a hawkish way, given that we are near full employment and see strong consumer spending.”–MBA Chief Economist Mike Fratantoni, on the likelihood of the Federal Reserve raising the federal funds rate at least three times this year.