Federal Housing Finance Agency requires Fannie and Freddie to expand...
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) just announced it would require Fannie and Freddie to expand their affordable housing mandates. For more than 50 years, U.S. housing policy has relied on...
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Mortgage Risk Index Release of December 2015 Data
The National Mortgage Risk Index (NMRI) measures how government guaranteed loans with a first payment date in a given month would perform if subjected to the same stress as in the financial crisis that...
View ArticleFederal Housing Finance Agency requires Fannie and Freddie to expand...
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) just announced it would require Fannie and Freddie to expand their affordable housing mandates. For more than 50 years, U.S. housing policy has relied on...
View ArticleHow to avoid the next housing debacle: Lessons from Europe and where the U.S....
In a recently released IMF working paper entitled the “Effectiveness and Channels of Macroprudential Instruments,” the authors argue that the cost of capital and loan-to-value ratios (LTVs) drive...
View ArticleWhy the 20-Year mortgage is the answer to housing finance mess
Editor’s note: This article was first published by American Banker on February 5, 2016. A recent Associated Press poll found more than six in 10 respondents expressed only slight confidence — or none...
View ArticleHousing finance’s two punch bowls by the federal government should be removed
Editor’s note: This article was first published by Inside Sources on February 9, 2016. As famously stated by Fed Chairman William McChesney Martin in 1955: “The Federal Reserve, after the recent...
View ArticleThe 30-year fixed-rate mortgage should be laid to rest
Editor’s note: The following interview was conducted by Scotsman Guide News with Edward Pinto. Most housing advocates fiercely advocate for the preservation of the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, but the...
View ArticleWhat the Quicken Loans Super Bowl ad can’t tell us about the housing market,...
Quicken Loans has been booed after airing a 60-second advertisement during this year’s Super Bowl about their newest product, the Rocket Mortgage, the first mortgage with a fully online application...
View ArticleConnecting the NAR’s Dots
On Tuesday, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) released its monthly update on Existing Home Sales for January 2016. According to the update, sales were up 0.4 percent in January compared to...
View ArticleThe troublesome competition among Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and FHA
The scramble by the three main federal housing agencies, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), to attract ever more borrowers is reaching a dangerous new phase....
View ArticleAre Existing-Home Sales Fizzling or Sizzling?
Earlier today, the NAR released its February update on Existing-Home Sales under the attention-grabbing headline “Existing-Home Sales Fizzle in February.” The numbers showed that existing-home sales...
View ArticleThe NAR, not FHA, should have a sale: How a real estate commission cut would...
With today’s update on Existing Home Sales for March, the NAR again asked the FHA to lower premiums again, effectively a call to put taxpayers at greater risk. Instead of further stoking demand, the...
View ArticleThe American homeownership dream is dying
Editor’s note: This article appeared in US News & World Report on May 12, 2016. While rising income inequality has become the bete noire of the left today, surprisingly, there has been little...
View ArticleConnecting the dots: Why housing finance is rigged
If anything, this election cycle has revealed the anger and frustration on both sides of the aisle with an economic and political system that many view as rigged. Maybe nowhere more so than in the...
View ArticleConnecting the Dots: Leveraging up House Prices and Housing Risk
The headline in housing last week was that the S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index showed home prices rising by 5.2 percent in March, down from 5.3 percent in February. Prospective...
View ArticleConnecting the Dots: Solving the NAR’s conundrum of rising home sales and...
Each month when it releases Existing Home Sales for the prior month, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) seems baffled by the conundrum posed by its own numbers: How can home sales rise when the...
View ArticleMortgage Market Index Release for Second Quarter 2016
The National Mortgage Market Index (NMMI) combines International Center on Housing Risk (ICHR) data on the federal agency market with public records data provided by First American via DataTree.com....
View ArticleMortgage Risk Index Release of July 2016 Data
The National Mortgage Risk Index (NMRI) measures how government guaranteed loans with a first payment date in a given month would perform if subjected to the same stress as in the financial crisis that...
View ArticleConnecting the Dots: Why Not to Raise the Loan Limit
In the mortgage business, the drumbeat for the government to support more leverage is a constant, occurring in both a buyer’s and a seller’s markets. But it is the latter that has potential for...
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First-Time Buyer Index Release of August 2016 Data
The First-Time Buyer Mortgage Share and Mortgage Risk Indices (FBMSI and FBMRI) are key housing market indicators based on monthly data for nearly all government-guaranteed home purchase loans, which...
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