Applications for both refinancing and purchase mortgages retreated last week, pulling the Mortgage Bankers Associations (MBA's) Market Composite Index lower for the second time in as many weeks. MBA said the index, a measure of application volume, decl...
The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision along partisan lines, took a chunk out of the intentions the Dodd-Frank Act had for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) when it created it. The court ruled that the single-director structure of the agenc...
Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors® (NAR), predicted last month that April's home sales contract activity "will be the lowest point for pending sales." That turns out to have been a huge understatement--at ...
In his analysis of current mortgage credit tightening for the Joint Center on Housing Studies excerpted here earlier, Don Layton included a special section on lender overlays. The former Freddie Mac CEO focused specifically on how those overlays may be...
The nine-week string of increases in purchase mortgage applications came to an end last week and refinancing volume pulled back as well. Consequently, the Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA's) Market Composite Index, a measure of overall application v...
After its pandemic-related plunge in April, the rapid recovery of the Housing Market Index, a measure of builder confidence, seems justified by today's Census Bureau report on new home sales. For the second month in a row, sales of newly constructed ho...
A paper written for the Joint Center on Housing Studies at Harvard University focuses on the causes and effects of mortgage credit tightening in the current COVID-crisis. The author, Don Layton, is a former CEO of Freddie Mac and a Senior Industry Fell...
Existing-home sales fell again in May, although only at a little more than half the rate of decline in April. Still, it marked the third month of falling sales as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. The National Association of Realtors® (NAR...
Freddie Mac's Economic and Housing Research Group says say that, heading into summer, the housing market is rebounding from the COVID-19 pandemic's damage faster than expected. Purchase demand is recovering, and any home price response has, so far, bee...
