Eye On Housing
Author Archives
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Closed-Ended Credit Surged in February
The Federal Reserve’s latest G.19 Consumer Credit Report shows rising trends in consumer credit, excluding loans secured by real estate, through February 2020. In February, consumer credit increased at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.4% from the previous month, with revolving debt1 increasing by 4.6% and nonrevolving debt2 increasing by 7 percent. Consumer credit totaled $4.2 trillion on a… Read More ›
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Uncertainty Looms in the Mortgage Market
The Mortgage Bankers Association’s latest Weekly Application Survey shows a 15.3% seasonally adjusted rise in loan application volume from the previous week. The Refinance index increased 25.5% from the previous week and was 168% higher than it was the same week one year ago. The Purchase Index decreased 10.8% from one week earlier. The MBA notes that buyer and seller… Read More ›
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Household Balance Sheets: 4Q19
The fourth quarter 2019 Financial Accounts of the United States, the Federal Reserve’s flow of funds data, show the aggregate values of households’ assets and liabilities in the nation. Households’ real estate assets totaled $29.3 trillion and liabilities totaled $10.6 trillion, making homeowners’ equity $18.7 trillion or 64% of total household real estate. The data show a continuation of the… Read More ›
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Single-Family Large Metro Construction Lagged in 2019
The fourth quarter NAHB Home Building Geography Index (HBGI) highlight recent performance of single-family and multifamily construction markets across the seven population density-based regional geographies of the index. Over the course of 2019, exurbs outside medium-sized cities, i.e., outlying counties of small metro areas, performed best at 2.9% growth rate. Small towns (micro counties) performed next best at 2.8%, although… Read More ›
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Student Loan Debt Spikes in January
The Federal Reserve’s latest G.19 Consumer Credit Report shows rising trends in consumer credit, excluding loans secured by real estate, through January 2019. In January, consumer credit increased at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.5% from the previous month, with revolving debt1 decreasing by 3.3% and nonrevolving debt2 increasing by 5.8 percent. Consumer credit totaled $4.2 trillion on a… Read More ›
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Refinancing Activity Soars
The Mortgage Bankers Association’s Weekly Application Survey shows a weekly increase in the Market Composite Index by 15.1% on a seasonally adjusted basis. The Refinance Index soared 26.0% from the previous week and the Purchase index decreased 2.7%. Looking at the Refinance series since its inception, the latest 10-week sprint of over 160% is the largest since January 2009 when… Read More ›
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Red Counties Outperform Blue Counties for Home Construction
For the current edition of the Home Building Geography Index (HBGI), NAHB introduces a red vs. blue segmentation of the 3,221 counties of the United States. “Red counties” are defined as those in which the majority of the population in the 2016 Presidential election voted for President Donald Trump, while “blue counties” are defined as those in which most of… Read More ›
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Mortgage Delinquencies Reach Historic Low
In the fourth quarter of 2019, the delinquency rate for mortgage loans on single-family homes1 decreased to 3.8% of all loans outstanding, according to the latest iteration of the Mortgage Bankers Association’s National Delinquency Survey. This is the lowest it has been since the series started in 1979. The delinquency rate includes loans that are at least one payment past… Read More ›
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Consumer Credit Expanded in 2019
The Federal Reserve’s latest G.19 Consumer Credit Report shows rising trends in consumer credit, excluding loans secured by real estate, through December 2019. In 2019, consumer credit increased 4.8 percent, with revolving and nonrevolving credit increasing 4.3 percent and 4.8 percent, respectively. In December, consumer credit increased at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6 percent from the previous month,… Read More ›
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Demand for Construction Loans Slowed at End of 2019
The Federal Reserve’s latest Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey contains the reported lending practices, as of the fourth quarter of 2019, of 80 large domestically chartered commercial banks and up to 24 large U.S. branches and agencies of foreign banks. The questions that comprise most of the survey are those relating to Commercial & Industrial (C&I) loans, Commercial Real Estate… Read More ›