Archive for August, 2007

Home Price Appreciation Slowing But Has Not Stopped

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.

Read More Now

Home Builders: Credit Crunch Is Hurting Business

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...

Read More Now

Mortgage Rates Decline but One Year ARM Rates Go Off the Chart

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).

Read More Now

Existing Home Sales Essentially Unchanged In July

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.

Read More Now

PBS and Bloomberg Charges Against Insurance Companies Draw Fire

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....

Read More Now

New Home Sales Register Improvement Over June

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.

Read More Now

Countrywide Rating Watch Revised By Fitch

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...

Read More Now

IndyMac To Resume Prime Jumbo Home Loans

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.

Minimum credit standards for these products are:

Read More Now

Countrywide Gets Big Cash Infusion And May Survive Crisis

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.

Read More Now

Uptick in Mortgage Rates Not a Result of Subprime Problems

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...

Read More Now