Study suggests house prices in Spain hit bottom
Editor’s note: The following 2015 first quarter report from ST Sociedad de Tasación analyzes current Spanish housing trends and calculates a confidence index for the Spanish real estate market. The...
View ArticleBuilding toward another mortgage meltdown
Editor’s Note: This excerpt is from an article first published in The Wall Street Journal on January 29, 2015. Read the full article here. The Obama administration’s troubling flirtation with another...
View ArticleThe Wealth Builder Home Loan
Editor’s note: This article, written by Tom Lamalfa, was first published in Mortgage Banking Magazine in February 2015. Here is a different twist on a 15-year mortgage product that’s designed to build...
View ArticleStudy shows seismic shift in lending away from large banks to nonbanks...
Key Takeaways: • The dramatic decline in agency market share for large banks continued unabated in February, offset by an equally dramatic increase in the nonbank share. • Since November 2012, the...
View ArticleProperty prices stabilize while real estate activity increases in Spain
Editor’s note: The following 2015 second quarter report from ST Sociedad de Tasación analyzes current Spanish housing trends and calculates a confidence index for the Spanish real estate market. During...
View ArticleFHA is all about moral hazard
“Moral hazard: a situation where one party gets involved in a risky event knowing that it is protected against the risk and the other party will incur the cost.” [1] The Federal Housing...
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Housing finance fact or fiction? FHA pioneered the 30-year fixed rate...
FHA introduced the 30-year, self-amortizing mortgage during the 1930s, which along with low-downpayments, helped raise the homeownership rate from 43.6% in 1940 to 61.9% in 1960. Summary: The standard...
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When is a price cut not a price cut?
Summary: In January 2015 FHA announced a substantial reduction of 0.50% in its annual mortgage insurance premium. This announcement was accompanied by a chorus citing positive benefits to middle-class...
View ArticleSpanish housing market continues to improve
Editor’s note: The following 2015 third quarter report from ST Sociedad de Tasación analyzes current Spanish housing trends and calculates a confidence index for the Spanish real estate market....
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 ArticleAppraisal Theory: Back to the Fundamentals
A presentation by Scholar Edward J. Pinto, Co-director of AEI’s International Center on Housing Risk, at the Appraisal Institute conference in Dallas, Texas on July 27-29, 2015.
View ArticleA better mortgage loan
Editor’s note: The following article by Stephen Oliner was first published as an UCLA Economic Letter in September 2015. Summary: Monthly condensed analyses of crucial real estate and economic issues...
View ArticleGAO report on mortgage reforms fails to address impact of QM and QRM
On July 25, 2015 the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report entitled: Mortgage Reforms: Actions Needed to Help Assess Effects of New Regulations. In response I sent a letter to...
View ArticleDid Chase Mortgage CEO get it wrong to call FHA lending subprime?
Recently Kevin Watters, CEO of Chase Mortgage Banking, compared low FICO, low down payment FHA loans to subprime. While he conflated a couple of FHA’s underwriting criteria, the fact remains that...
View ArticleUnaffordable Affordable Housing
Notwithstanding trillions of dollars in home loans, our affordable homeownership policies have failed to achieve two primary goals – broadening homeownership and achieving wealth accumulation for low-...
View ArticleA better measure of mortgage lending standards than flawed Fed survey
Earlier this week the Fed released the closely-watched quarterly Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices (SLOOS). The survey of loan officers is widely viewed as providing a key...
View ArticleThe NAR’s faulty facts regarding first-time buyer activity lead to faulty...
Earlier this month the National Association of Realtors (NAR) released its annual Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers (NAR Profile). [1] The report, which attracted widespread media attention, was based...
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Mortgage Risk Index Release of October 2015 Data
The composite National Mortgage Risk Index (NMRI) for Agency purchase loans stood at 12.14% in October, up 0.76 percentage point from a year earlier. The monthly composite has increased year-over-year...
View ArticleFifty years of housing policy failure: how housing policies have made housing...
Editor’s Note: Edward J. Pinto distributed “A Housing Primer: Fifty Years of Housing Policy Failure: How Housing Policies Have Made Housing Unaffordable” in October 2015 at the Fourth annual...
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Mortgage Risk Index Release of November 2015 Data
The composite National Mortgage Risk Index (NMRI) for Agency purchase loans stood at 12.34% in November, up 0.67 percentage point from a year earlier. The monthly composite has increased...
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