After nearly 20 years of rising rents, renter affordability, or the lack thereof, is a hot topic in housing. The long-running increase in rents has fueled a rise in the share of rent-burdened households, defined by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as households that spend over 30 percent of their income on rent.
Read More ›
Overall defect risk, as measured by our Loan Application Defect Index, has largely trended down since early 2019 with a few exceptions. In January 2020, this long-run trend continued as overall defect risk reached its lowest level since we began tracking it in 2011. While the Defect Index for purchase transactions remained the same after two ...
Read More ›
As 2019 came to a close, potential home buyers received a year-end gift as affordability improved relative to one year ago. Two of the three key drivers of the Real House Price Index (RHPI), household income and mortgage rates, swung in favor of increased affordability in December.
Read More ›
The housing market started the year off strong, with the market potential for existing-home sales reaching its highest level since January 2018, according to our Potential Home Sales Model. Housing market potential increased 1.4 percent in January 2020 relative to the previous month, and grew 4.7 percent year over year, an increase of 240,050 ...
Read More ›
The 2019 housing market turned out to be surprisingly strong, driven by a variety of favorable dynamics. Millennial-driven, first-time home buyer demand continued to rise, the economy reached its longest expansion in U.S. history in the third quarter of 2019, and rising wages pushed household incomes higher. Mortgage rates, which began their ...
Read More ›
In the third quarter of 2019, the United States reached its longest economic expansion in history, which caused some people to wonder whether we were overdue for a correction. Additionally, global uncertainty resulted in a flight to safety of U.S. Treasury bonds, prompting the dreaded inversion of the yield curve. When that happened, we discussed ...
Read More ›