Commentary

Annual home appreciation relaxed, but CoreLogic predicts that the market will “start regaining steam” later this year.

No one can say how long it will take AI to move into the underwriter’s office, but we know that’s not where it will start. New research from STRATMOR argues that the AI ripples have already begun to spread.

The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) announced that data from 4,460 U.S. financial institutions on the state of 2022 mortgage lending activity as reported by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HDMA) is now available to view.

CoreLogic reports that U.S. loan performance remains resilient, with delinquencies and foreclosures lingering near record lows, and the national overall delinquency rate increasing slightly from March to April.

A survey from Mphasis Digital Risk shows that a majority of younger Americans routinely go online to check the value of friends’ and neighbors’ home prices, and this act is causing them yet another form of stress.

On a year-over-year basis, the Case-Shiller Index, regarded as a leading indicator of U.S. home prices, reported a 0.3% annual decrease in April, down from a gain of 0.7% in March 2023. Click through for more on the index and expert insights on the results of this month’s index.

“Housing's performance is a testimony to the strength of demographic-related demand in the face of baby boomers aging in place and Gen-Xers locking in historically low rates,” noted Doug Duncan, SVP and Chief Economist for Fannie Mae.

Realtor.com has updated their forecast for the year, now saying mortgage rates could drop to 6% by the year’s end, but inventory woes are not likely to improve and could drop to numbers last seen in 2012.

NAR reports that existing-home sales recorded a slight gain of 0.2% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.3 million units.

“After last quarter’s historic high of 2.47%, the reduction in Q4’s critical defect rate to a sub-2% level is encouraging and illustrates just how much the precipitous drop in origination volumes impacted lending operations,” said ACES EVP Nick Volpe.