Headlines

Home asking prices rose just 9.0 percent year-over-year in April, the smallest gain in 11 months, and Trulia chief economist Jed Kolko has a few ideas why that number has fallen. One reason for the slippage is from a large price spike during the housing recovery in February and April of 2013, according Kolko. Year-over-year changes in April 2014 no longer include these elevated months, dropping yearly asking price numbers.

A recently unveiled plan to phase out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and overhaul the secondary mortgage market may have hit another snag, with six key senators reportedly deciding not to give their support. According to Bloomberg, six members of the Senate Banking Committee—all Democrats—have cited concerns that plans in the Johnson-Crapo proposal for finance reform "seemed unworkable."

Moving forward in its efforts to expand lending options for non-prime borrowers, Carrington Mortgage Services, LLC announced the appointment of a new national sales director hired to focus on what the company says is an underserved market.

As home sellers become more confident in the housing market, many are taking on what Redfin calls a “risky pricing strategy,” according to the online real estate brokerage’s latest survey. A little more than 40 percent of home sellers plan to price their homes above market value, Redfin’s data shows. Regardless of this bolstered confidence, Redfin warns overpricing a home is not a wise strategy in today’s market.

Single-family home sales in Connecticut increased year-over-year in March, marking the 11th consecutive annual increase, according to the Warren Group. Meanwhile, the state’s median home price experienced its first downward slide since June 2012. However, Timothy M. Warren Jr., CEO of the Warren Group, called March’s price drop “an aberration of data and not the start of a new trend.”

A new report from RealtyTrac indicates all-cash home sales accounted for 42.7 percent of first-quarter purchases, a record high since the company started tracking the data in 2011. "Strict lending standards combined with low inventory continue to give the advantage to investors and other cash buyers in this housing market," said Daren Blomquist, VP at RealtyTrac.

The percentage of older Americans with outstanding mortgage debt has increased since the start of the housing crisis, according to a report released Wednesday by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). In fact, according to the bureau, about half of retired seniors with mortgage debt pay more than 30 percent of their household income on housing costs.

Despite performing far better than anticipated, April jobs numbers weren’t enough to prop up fixed mortgage rates this week, market reports show. In its Primary Mortgage Market Survey, Freddie Mac clocked the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) at an average 4.21 percent (0.6 point), down from 4.29 percent and the lowest level since late last year. A year ago, the 30-year FRM averaged 3.42 percent.

A report released Thursday by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) shows that mortgage credit availability was down slightly in April, which means a tightening of standards in the mortgage industry. The results, which analyze data from the AllRegs Market Clarity product, come through MBA’s Mortgage Credit Availability Index (MCAI). These results showed that the MCAI index decreased by 0.18 percent to 113.8 from March to April.

In response to recent catastrophic weather conditions in Arkansas and other parts of the Midwest and South, a la mode’s Mercury Network will waive transaction fees for all disaster reports in impacted areas for 90 days, the technology vendor announced.