The MReport Webcast: Thursday 5/7/2015

Lower-priced homes stood a better chance at survival during the 2006 to 2009 housing crisis, according to an Urban Wire blog post by the Urban Institute. Not only did cheaper homes recover more quickly from the bust, according to national averages and location data found by the Urban Institute, but cheaper homes became more expensive during the boom as well. According to the post’s authors, there are four price tiers when it comes to home values: low, middle-low, middle-high, and high, and on a national level the homes in these tiers follow the same trends of boom, bust, and recovery, but each has slight variations of numbers.

Prices of cheaper homes grew about 88 percent from 2001 to 2006, in comparison with 80 percent for the middle-low tier, 77 percent for middle-high, and 65 percent for the high. Data reveals that the low tier fell 26 percent from 2006 to 2009 after the housing market collapsed, a four percent increase over the high tier. The middle-high and middle-low tiers endured the most impact with a drop of 28 and 31 percent. The lowest tier experienced the best recovery, with prices up by 33 percent. On the other hand, the middle-low, middle-high, and high-priced tiers increased 16 to 23 percent over the same time frame.

United States Congressman Ed Royce announced that he plans to submit legislation by the end of the week to prevent a potential pay increase for Freddie Mac CEO Donald Layton. The Federal Housing Finance Agency has given Freddie Mac and its fellow GSE, Fannie Mae, authorization to review the salaries of their respective CEOs, Layton and Timothy Mayopoulos. Both CEOs made $600,000 each without bonuses in 2014.