U.S. household debt rose to a record $15.84 trillion in the first quarter driven almost entirely by a $250 billion increase in home loan balances, but the rise was the smallest in a year and new mortgage and auto loan originations declined for a third straight quarter. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s quarterly household debt report… Read More »
“2000 showed you can just about skate through a stock market event,” Grantham said in an interview with Bloomberg columnist John Authers on Wednesday, published Friday. “But Japan and 2008 showed you can’t skate through a housing crisis.” Grantham predicted in January that one of the few great market “superbubbles” in modern history is about to pop. On top of worrying… Read More »
In mid-April, months into an increasingly frustrating house hunt, Harsh Grewal and his wife settled on a place in a San Francisco suburb and were prepping a bid, above the listed price so they’d have a chance of besting other offers in one of the nation’s hottest housing markets. Then he checked his phone and saw several alerts,… Read More »
“Mortgage rates increased for the seventh consecutive week, as Treasury yields continued to rise,” Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist, told Yahoo Money. “While springtime is typically the busiest homebuying season, the upswing has caused some volatility in demand. It continues to be a seller’s market, but buyers who remain interested in purchasing a home may find that… Read More »
Housing activity slowed for a second straight month in March. Existing home sales fell 2.7% to a seasonally adjusted 5.77 million units in March from a month earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Home sales fell across all regions in the U.S. from February. The NAR also revised February existing home sales downward to 5.93 million from 6.02 million.… Read More »
“The increase in rates negatively impacted our mortgage banking business,” Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf told analysts on Thursday. “The mortgage origination market experienced one of the largest quarterly declines that I can remember.” Wells Fargo home loans fell 33% from a year ago on lower mortgage originations and lower gains when selling those loans in the secondary… Read More »
April 13 (Reuters) – The average interest rate on the most popular U.S. home loan rose to more than 5% last week, the highest level since November 2018, and homebuyers hurried to make purchases before costs rise further, the latest weekly survey from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) showed on Wednesday. The average contract rate on a 30-year… Read More »
“Mortgage application volume continues to decline due to rapidly rising mortgage rates, as financial markets expect significantly tighter monetary policy in the coming months,” said Joel Kan, an MBA economist. “As higher rates reduce the incentive to refinance, application volume dropped to its lowest level since the spring of 2019.” The refinance share of all applications fell to… Read More »
(Reuters) – The interest rate on the most popular U.S. home loan jumped last week by the most in 11 years as bond market investors rapidly repositioned for the Federal Reserve to take more aggressive action to contain inflation, a survey showed on Wednesday. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said the contract rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage… Read More »