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Home sales from Los Angeles to Charleston, South Carolina that are priced at more than $1 million are gaining at triple the pace of the broader market, according to real estate research firm DataQuick Inc. According to Susan Wachter, a professor of real estate and finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and an architect of Clinton’s housing policy (The National Homeownership Strategy: Partners in the American Dream), wealthy purchasers, helped by gains in equities, are diving into real estate a year after a recovery began in the housing market when less-well-heeled buyers rushed to take advantage of record-low...

First off, I welcome President Barack Obama’s call to shutter mortgage giants (and giant pains in the public arse) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Many conservatives and libertarians have been beating that drum since 2008 and before, back when Obama was voting present on regulation of Fannie/Freddie and taking more in donations from them than all but one lawmaker. Now, it seems, we can work together on this project, as Obama pushed a Senate plan to close Fannie and Freddie during an economic address in Arizona: But as home prices rise, we can’t just re-inflate a housing bubble. That’s the...

President Obama will urge Congress to shutter Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage-giants bailed out by the government in 2008, as part of a strategy to buffer taxpayers from future housing market downturns. In a speech Tuesday in Phoenix, Obama will call for transitioning the business model of Fannie and Freddie into a system where "private capital must be wiped out before the government pays on any form of catastrophic guarantee," a senior administration official said. Obama will also renew his calls for sweeping mortgage refinancing legislation when he travels to Phoenix Tuesday. Arizona's desert capital was the epicenter...

President Obama on Tuesday will for the first time insist that any future housing system in the United States makes 30-year mortgages widely available to borrowers, senior administration officials said, preserving a linchpin of the American economy but also continuing to expose taxpayers to risk from another housing meltdown. (Snip) That will require, officials said, some form of government guarantee that means lenders will be reimbursed by taxpayers in the event of a housing catastrophe like the one that occurred several years ago. Traveling to Phoenix on Tuesday, Obama is planning to call for a new

Here is the written statement from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Surprise, surprise, surprise! The Fed Funds Target remains unchanged. fedfundstarget The Taylor Rule, believe it or not, called for a LOWERING of the Fed Funds Target. tayloru;e073113 The Federal Reserve said it will maintain its $85 billion in monthly bond purchases and persistently low inflation could hamper the expansion. fedbal073113 The 10 year Treasury rate rose this morning, then fell on The Fed’s announcement. ust10073113 The Dow Jones Industrial Average had a similar reaction. dow073113 The announcement said that The Fed will remain accommodative until the labor market...

According to the weekly Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) mortgage application survey released this morning, mortgage applications drop 3.7% from the previous week. mbastats073113 Mortgage purchase applications fell 3.43% from the previous week. And since May 1st, purchase applications have fallen with rising mortgage rates (the Mortgage Bankers 30 year effective rate). mbapurchmayday073113 The longer term view of purchase applications (and the MBA mortgage rate index) reveals the zone of slow/no growth in purchase applications since June 2010. mbapltrtes And if I overlay the national homeownership rate on the MBA mortgage purchase application index, we can the relationship, until 2010. Since...

Obama had lofty goals of helping 4 million Americans keep their homes with his Home Affordable Mortgage Program (HAMP). Here are some quick facts:   HAMP modified 1.2 million mortgages (70% less than the target) 306,000 re-defaults Another 88,000 at risk The re-default rate is an alarming 30% The re-default rate of those in since 2009 is 46% CNNMoney has additional details in Watchdog: Borrowers in Obama housing program re-defaulting.   Borrowers who received help through the government's main foreclosure prevention program are re-defaulting on their mortgages at alarming rates, a federal watchdog said in a report released Wednesday.  Nearly 1.2 million...

MALAGA, Spain, Jul 28 (IPS) - "You live there for free, don't you?" asked a woman as she passed by the Buenaventura "corrala", a community in a building in this southern Spanish city occupied since February by families evicted from their homes for falling behind in their mortgage payments due to unemployment. "We don't want any handouts. We want to pay, through a social rent scheme," replied 42-year-old Yuli Fajardo, who was living in a tent before she found shelter along with some 40 other people in one of the 13 spacious apartments in this four-storey block of flats in...

The Dodd-Frank banking bill is slowly unraveling. “Concerned that tougher mortgage rules could hamper the housing recovery, regulators are preparing to relax a key plank of the rules proposed after the financial crisis (Dodd-Frank). The watchdogs, which include the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., want to loosen a proposed requirement that banks retain a portion of the mortgage securities they sell to investors, according to people familiar with the situation.“ Dodd-Frank required that issuers should retain 5% of all mortgage-backed securities issued without government backing. So, regultors are considering lowering the skin in the game requirement). Congress directed...

I am speaking at the Cleveland Fed on September 19th concerning “The New Housing Finance System: Are We There Yet?” But with the mortgage market shrinking, I may not have to speak at the conference. mbastats072413 According to the Mortgage Bankers Association weekly survey, mortgage purchase applications fell 2.07% from the preceding week. mbapurchase072413 Mortgage rates (using Bankrate’s 30 year fixed-rate index) have been generally rising since May 1st (pink box), but falling since July 5th (red box). But even with falling mortgage rates, mortgage purchase applications fell last week and have been generally falling since July 5th. mbapurchmayday1 The...

Bank of America Corp.’s shareholder equity declined in the second quarter as the company’s bond portfolio sustained the biggest hit from rising interest rates among top lenders. The second-biggest U.S. bank by assets reported a $4.22 billion drop in a measure of equity that includes changes in bond holdings, currency translations and pension adjustments. The bulk was from unrealized losses in the securities portfolio, including a $5.73 billion decline in the value of government-backed mortgage securities. It is no mystery as to why BofA lost money. Between April 1st and June 30th, agency MBS took a beating (particularly after May...

U.S. housing starts unexpectedly fell in June to the lowest level in almost a year. hs071713 Mortgage applications dropped 2.61% from the preceding week. However, mortgage PURCHASE applications actually rose slightly 0.5%. mbapurchase071713 And as you can see, the Bankrate 30 year fixed-rate average mortgage rate fell last week. Over the long term, we are still stuck at purchase application levels from the mid 1990s. mbaprchlt071713 Of course, median household income in real terms has been falling which doesn’t bode well for the size of the pool of good quality borrowers. household-income-real1-13a Mortgage refinancing fell 4.19% from the preceding week...

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke will have a Q&A following the release on the Fed’s FOMC minutes today at 2pm EST. Here are the minutes. Quick summary of the last FOMC meeting: half the voting members want to stop asset purchases later this year. The other half, wait for improving economic conditions. The reaction in the 10 year Treasury yield? t10reaction But prior to his Q&A session, the 10 year Treasury auction went off as expected. trreas10yraux The 10 Year High Yield continues to climb. ust10ihg The 30 year auction is tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Rising Treasury and mortgage rates have been in the news quite a bit recently. Banks have suffered capital losses with the recent rises in rates. According to the Federal Reserve, unrealized gains in bank portfolios plummeted from more than $40 billion at the beginning of the year to about $6 billion, with the most precipitous declines over the past few weeks amid mounting market concern about the “tapering” of the central bank’s bond-buying program. The bright spot in the economy? Rising pending home sales! Pending home sales have been rising quite a bit in recent months. But at the same...

Investors apparently liked today’s jobs report of +195,000 non-farm employment, despite full-time jobs falling by -240,000. wbm070513 And the US Treasury 10 year yield rose about 20 basis points. ust10070513 The Fannie Mae 4% MBS took a dive with the rise in Treasury yields. fn4pr And the duration of the Fannie Mae 4% MBS continues to climb. fn4dur All this does not bode well for mortgage rates. Let’s see how the Freddie Mac US Mortgage Market Survey 30 Year Homeowner Commitment rate does this week. fredconf The US dollar spot rate is up. usdollr070513 Commodities? Gold and silver way down,...

Since May 1st, both US Treasury yields and Japanese sovereign yields have risen, but mostly the US Treasury yields. usjapyc063013 And with the rise in sovereign yields, mortgage rates in both the US and Japan have risen. japausmortgagerates Both US and Japanese house prices were deflating since 2008, but Japan (in red) continues to deflate while the US house prices (in blue) are showing a sudden increase … again. usjaphouse In Japan, mortgages secured by housing has been declining since 1992, but started to stabilize in 2007 when US mortgage volume started to fall. mortgvoljapanuse So, how will rising mortgage...

There are two factors that determine mortgage affordability. One is house price levels and the other is mortgage interest rates. Both are rising rapidly translating into lower housing affordability. First, here is a chart of housing prices since February 2012. Whether its the FHFA Purchase Only Index, the Case-Shiller 20, the Loan Performance HP or the NAR’s median home price index for existing home sales, they are all rising. Second, Treasury and mortgage rates have risen around 63 basis points since May 2nd. And Fannie Mae’s current coupon rate has risen from 2.296% on May 2nd to 3.270% as on...

The Mortgage Refinancing Boom Is Evaporating Before Our Eyes Mamta Badkar and Matthew Boesler June 14, 2013, 1:29 PM Mortgage rates have been climbing for five straight weeks, and the latest data from the Mortgage Banker's Association shows that the average 30-year fixed rate is now at 4.15%, up from 3.59% in the first week of May. Meanwhile, the MBA's refinancings index is down 36% from its peak at the beginning of May. The rise in mortgage rates has been driven by concerns about when the Federal Reserve will begin to slow its $85-billion-a-month bond purchase program, which is designed...

Fannie And Freddie Are Getting Smoked — Down 40% Today Sam Ro May 29, 2013, 11:48 AM Shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are getting destroyed today. Stifel Nicolaus' Dave Lutz points us to reports that Senator Bob Corker will push to wind down Fannie and Freddie as part of housing finance reform. Fannie and Freddie are government sponsored enterprises (GSE) that were created to boost liquidity in the mortgage markets buy packaging mortgages and selling them off to investors as bonds (or mortgage-back securities). These MBS also came with implicit guarantees, which got the them into trouble when...

Cash And Tarry: Mortgage Applications Plunge At Fastest Rate Since 2009 Tyler Durden 05/29/2013 09:47 -0400 In the 'old normal' a spike in interest rates would have sparked an avalanche of 'rational' home-buyers and refinancers to apply for mortgages for 'fear' of the 'never-to-be-seen-again' rates disappearing. It seems, however, courtesy of a Bernanke-trained market, that this surge in rates has pushed many to the sidelines (mortgage applications slipped 8.8% WoW and -23% in the last 3 weeks), we presume waiting for the omnipotent-one to save the day yet again. The year-to-date shift in mortgage applications is now the worst since...