In 2024, the Research Institute for Housing America (RIHA) published data which found that older Americans are remaining in their homes longer. Over the past decade, the homeownership rate among adults aged 70 and older has increased substantially. According to the 2024 American Community Survey, homeowners aged 55 and older owned 55 percent of all owner-occupied homes in the United States, with more than one-third owned by households headed by someone age 65 or older.
Tag: Chart of the Week
Chart of the Week: Median First-Time Homebuyer Age
First-time homebuyers (FTHBs) are an incredibly important group to the housing market, particularly given the lock-in effect, which is causing many older homeowners to forego moves.
Chart of the Week: Credit Score Transition Table
This week’s MBA Chart of the Week presents an analysis of the credit scores recorded in ICE loan application data from the first half of 2025. Each record includes up to three anonymized credit scores for both the borrower and co-borrower.
Chart of the Week: Components of Direct Servicing Operating Costs
In the previous week’s Chart of the Week, we focused on the major cost components of originating a loan in 2025. This week’s Chart of the Week focuses on the major cost components of servicing a loan based on data from the annual Servicing Operations Study and Forum (SOSF), MBA’s most detailed and comprehensive servicing benchmarking study representing almost 60% of the residential servicing market.
Chart of the Week: Homeownership by Country
In a forthcoming MBA White Paper, “Implications of a Persistent Slowing in Housing Demand,” MBA’s Research and Economics team examines, among other topics, homeownership rates in the United States by age and by race and ethnicity. The overall homeownership rate stood at 65.3% in the first quarter of 2026, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Chart of the Week: Mortgage Delinquency Rates and Spreads Across Loan Type
According to the latest results from MBA’s National Delinquency Survey (NDS), the delinquency rate for mortgage loans on one-to-four-unit residential properties increased to a seasonally adjusted rate of 4.44% of all loans outstanding at the end of the first quarter of 2026. The delinquency rate was up 18 basis points from the fourth quarter of 2025 and up 40 basis points from one year ago.
Chart of the Week: Monthly Payroll Growth and Unemployment Rates
Based on April’s employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there was some positive news on the job market for April, with the unemployment rate steady at 4.3%, employment growth at a solid 115,000, and wage growth picking up to 3.6% at an annual rate.
MBA Chart of the Week: Consumer Price Index Inflation
The impact of the war in Iran and the disruption of shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz has pushed inflation to the forefront of economic concerns.
Chart of the Week: IMB Net Production Income
Independent mortgage banks (IMBs) and mortgage subsidiaries of chartered banks reported a pre-tax net production profit of 17 basis points (or $674 per originated loan) in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) newly released Quarterly Mortgage Bankers Performance Report.
Chart of the Week: Monthly Payroll Growth and Unemployment Rates
In 2025, job growth slowed to a crawl as the economy added an average of 10,000 jobs per month, and what little growth there was came from just a few sectors, notably health care.