Eye On Housing
Author Archives
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4Q20 Home Building Geography Index: Diversity Measures
The topic of diversity, and its relationship to homeownership and home building, carries significant implications for policy making, social justice, and equity. In addition to the usual regional classification, NAHB’s Q4 2020 Home Building Geography Index (HBGI) provides a segmentation of the housing market based on county-level measurements of racial and ethnic heterogeneity. For this purpose, we use ESRI’s1 2018… Read More ›
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Mortgage Environment Shifts to Higher Mortgage Rates
Since the start of 2021, the MBA’s tracked 30-year fixed rate mortgage rate has increased 40 basis points and currently stands at 3.28%. The week that showing the largest gains over the last month was the week ending February 26, increasing by 15 basis points. The previous week (i.e., the week ending February 19) saw an increase of 10 basis… Read More ›
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Households’ Balance Sheets: Q4 2020
According to the Federal Reserve Flow of Funds report, as of the fourth quarter of 2020, the market value of all real estate assets held by households stood at $32.0 trillion. On the other side of the balance sheet, their liabilities, i.e., the mortgages held on said assets, totaled $10.9 trillion. As a result, total owners’ equity, defined as the… Read More ›
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Regional Submarkets See Multifamily Residential Construction Decline in Q4 2020
As part of the latest iteration of NAHB’s Home Building Geography Index (HBGI), it was previously shown that single-family homebuilding in the fourth quarter of 2020 continued a trend of a suburban shift to lower density markets. However, for multifamily residential construction, what started as double-digit growth in all the HBGI’s Regional submarkets in the first quarter of 2020 devolved… Read More ›
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Revolving Credit Decreased in January
In January 2020, consumer credit decreased at a seasonally adjusted annual rate by 0.4% from the previous month, with revolving debt1 decreasing by 12.2% and nonrevolving debt2 increasing by 3.2%. Consumer credit totaled $4.2 trillion on a seasonally adjusted annual basis, with $965 billion comprised of revolving debt and $3.2 trillion in nonrevolving debt. This marks a total decrease of $1.3 billion from… Read More ›
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MBA Data Indicates Slow Decline for Past Due Loan Share
According to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) 2020 fourth quarter National Delinquency Survey (NDS), on a seasonally adjusted basis, the percentage of loans past due decreased from 7.65% in the third quarter to 6.73%. State-level data of the past due loan category reveal that California and Texas made up the top two states with the greatest number of past due… Read More ›
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NAHB 4th Quarter HBGI: Suburban Shift for Construction in 2020
The suburban shift in home building to meet growing buyer preferences for lower density, lower cost markets stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic that was first reported in the second quarter National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Home Building Geography Index (HBGI) has continued throughout the rest of 2020. Single-family construction continued to overperform in suburbs, exurbs and rural communities, according… Read More ›
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Mortgage Activity Remains Higher Year-over-Year
For the four-week period ending on February 5, 2021, the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) latest Weekly Application Surveys showed sustained elevated activity, unseen through most of 2020, except at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the MBA’s tracked 30-year fixed-rate mortgage hovered a few basis points above 2.9%, reaching 2.96% in the latest week. While Purchasing maintained higher levels… Read More ›
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Little Change for Total Consumer Credit in 2020
As with most things in 2020, consumer credit’s trajectory of growth was upended by the COVID-19-induced economic recession. Revolving credit, of which credit card debt is a major component, shrank by 11.2% over the year, while nonrevolving credit increased 3.9%, thus producing an overall growth rate of 0.0%. In December, consumer credit increased at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of… Read More ›
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Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey Q4 2020
The most recent edition of the Federal Reserve Board’s Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey Practices addresses changes in the standards and terms on, and demand for, bank loans to businesses and households in the last quarter of 2020. Survey respondents (banks) reported a tightening of standards of both Commercial and Industrial (C&I) loans and Commercial Real Estate (CRE) loans to… Read More ›