The OFHEO House Price Index (HPI) usually doesn't get
too much attention (except here where we regard it as the best, or at
least the most interesting of the periodic housing indicators) but this
time around people began anticipating it days before it was actually
issued and there was speculation that it would be the harbinger of really
bad news to come.
The Index, however, did not show a nationwide drop in housing prices
as had been expected, just the smallest increase in many years.
Two executives from the National Association of Home
Builders held a teleconference on the "credit
crunch" on Tuesday. The one hour conference was hosted by Jerry Howard,
CEO of NAHB and David Seiders, Chief Economist.
When asked what impact tighter mortgage lending
standards had had on new home sales during the past month...
Mortgage rates in general took a fairly substantial dive during the
previous week with longer term rates dropping double digits in most cases
and some rates returning to mid-2006 levels. However, the Mortgage
Bankers Association reported a spectacular increase in
the interest rate of the one-year adjustable rate mortgage (ARM).
The Times quoted Moody's Economy.com, a research firm as predicting
that the national median home price will probably not return to its 2007
peak in inflation-adjusted dollars for more than a decade.
The price decreases, however, will probably not come close to wiping
out the increases homeowners have seen in the last few years.
Katrina may have marked the end for this lack of regulation. As has
been widely reported, one victim of the storm was Senator Trent
Lott, the powerful Republican Senator from Mississippi whose
expensive Gulf Coast home disappeared completely into Katrina's maw. Lott
was insured by State Farm and after the company refused to pay one cent
of his claim based on the water v. wind argument we
talked about in part one of this article, Lott sued. He and the company
agreed to an undisclosed settlement this spring but Lott is still angry.
He has....
Sales of new homes improved slightly in July with a
seasonally adjusted annual sales pace of 870,000, up 2.8 percent above
the revised June sales figures. The June number had been particularly
dismal at an annualized 834,000 units, well below the 895,000 units
analysts had been expecting. The final figure for June, while still well
below the expected number, was 846,000, 12,000 above what had been
initially reported.
Fitch Ratings announced Thursday that it has revised its Rating Watch
on Countrywide Financial Corp. (CFC) and its related
subsidiaries from "Negative" to "Evolving." This revised rating signifies
that Fitch may upgrade, downgrade or affirm the current rating once they
have gathered additional information.
Fitch believes that
residual effects caused by these liquidity issues will have
significant impact on origination volume and...
IndyMac Bank announced today that it will resume
originating prime, single-family residential, full doc jumbo loans after
they temporarily reduced the origination of these products due to the
recent credit cruch in the secondary markets.
Several more big lenders joined the junk pile this week but there was
a piece of good news for the nation's largest mortgage
lender which managed to survive a very tough couple of weeks and now
appears capable of living to fight another day.
Mortgage rates increased in every category last week
according to surveys released by Freddie Mac and by the Mortgage Bankers
Association.
Jay Brinkmann, MBA's vice president of research and economics
cautioned that,"Given the current turmoil in the
mortgage market, week-to-week changes in the purchase applications index
should be treated with...
