Origination

Although home sales in the U.S. have reached their highest peak since 2007 during the first four months of 2015, foreign homebuyers are not adding to these growing sales. According to a blog by Frank Nothaft, CoreLogic’s chief economist, in relation to the same period one year ago, home sales jumped 9 percent with the help of lower fixed mortgage rates by one-half percentage point, but foreign buyers did not help with this increase.

In the last eight years, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have guaranteed at least half of all new mortgage originations. In a report released on Thursday by the Urban Institute (UI), authors Laurie Goodman, director of Housing Finance Policy Center at UI and Karan Kaul, a research associate at UI determined that the two GSEs play an important, indisputable part in the U.S. mortgage market, but also pose a huge risk to taxpayers.

The conflicts of student loan debt surpass just actual repayment. Trulia research titled "The Debt of Wrath: Do Student Loans Affect Saving for a Home?" recently found that college degrees hinder young millennials from saving up for a 20 percent down payment on a home due to student loan repayment, but in the most expensive markets, only those with a college degree will be capable of saving up enough for a home in their lifetime.

Following the lead of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling legalizing same sex marriage nationwide, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has recently announced that it will offer home loans and other benefits to the spouses and children in all same sex veteran marriages. The U.S. Supreme Court announced on June 26, 2015 in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges that the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires a State to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-State.

NetDirector, a provider of cloud-based data and document exchange services for the mortgage banking industry, recently signed an agreement with enterprise lending solutions provider, Mortgage Machine Services, to enable them to comply with the upcoming TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure (TRID) requirements, according to a recent press release.

Mortgage originations have seen tremendous growth this year, according to Equifax's National Consumer Credit Trends Report. The report found that mortgage origination balances reached $466 billion in the first quarter, a 74.4 percent increase from the same time a year ago. First mortgages increased 79.9 percent compared to the first quarter of 2014 to $430 billion, leading this growth spurt. Meanwhile, originations of home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) increased 30 percent to $30.9 billion and new home equity installment loans climbed 13.6 percent to $5 billion.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) recently released a chart that highlights the existing-home sales in a historical context. The graph reveals that the rate of housing turnovers, while improving, are not up to ‘normal’ rates. The MBA graph shows that housing markets are recovering, but are still weak. The turnover rate rests slightly above 7 percent currently in the second quarter, an amount that falls short of a ‘normal’ rate of 7.5 percent, but still surpasses the recent low of 4.8 percent from the third quarter of 2010.

According to new research by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) International Center on Housing Risk (ICHR), the FHA’s price cut was largely capitalized into the purchase of higher priced homes. The research reviewed over 2.5 million first-time homebuyer loans. Edward Pinto, the research author and co-director of AEI’s International Center on Housing Risk said that the effort to reduce mortgage premiums did little to expand access to middle-and lower-wealth borrowers, while the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and other housing interest groups reaped the benefits of the higher home prices.

Millennials have become more positive when it comes purchasing their first home and are primed to gain market share in the second half of the year, based on the results of Realtor.com’s Consumer Behavior Survey. Relator.com found that 65 percent of the survey respondents indicated that they intend to buy a home within three months, up from 54 percent in January.

Earlier this month, Freddie Mac announced that it would offer its Loan Prospector underwriter system free of charge as of June 1, 2015. Today, Fannie Mae matched Freddie Mac’s offer and announced that it will eliminate fees on its Desktop Underwriter automated underwriting system and Desktop Originator tool.