Category: News and Trends

FHA yesterday announced it will cut insurance rates for multifamily mortgages, designed to stimulate production and rehabilitation of affordable rental housing.

RealtyTrac, Irvine, Calif., reported 6.4 million U.S. properties in negative equity at the end of 2015, representing 11.5 percent of all properties with a mortgage, a drop of 616,000 from a year ago.

Falling delinquencies and slowing special servicing loan transfers year-over-year contributed to improved performance metrics for commercial mortgage-backed securities, but leverage now approaches the pre-crisis peak, analysts said.

ORLANDO–11 percent, or $183.3 billion out of $1.7 trillion in outstanding commercial and multifamily mortgages held by non-bank lenders and investors, will mature in 2016, a 51 percent increase from $121.0 billion that matured in 2015, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported.

Equifax, Atlanta, said first mortgage originations for subprime borrowers (consumers with an Equifax Risk Score of 620 or below) showed steady growth from January to October 2015, with more than 312,000 new mortgages originated, totaling $50.7 billion.

Consumer credit default rates remained largely unchanged in December, as reported by Standard & Poor’s Dow Jones Indices and Experian, New York. 

Expenditures for home improvements should see healthy gains in 2016, the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University said.

Offices of the Mortgage Bankers Association remain closed today (Tuesday, Jan. 26) as cleanup efforts from the weekend’s winter storm continue in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency yesterday issued a final rule on Federal Home Loan Bank membership that retains a controversial Mortgage Bankers Association-opposed restriction on captive insurers. 

CoreLogic, Irvine, Calif., said the U.S. foreclosure inventory declined by 21.8 percent and completed foreclosures declined by 18.8 percent compared to a year ago.