Commentary

Businesses are increasingly leveraging digital technologies to reduce errors and costs, speed up transactions, and drive enhanced and better customer service, according to Peter Ghavami, the VP of Modeling and Data Sciences for Fannie Mae.

“In recent years, housing inventory constraints and home-price appreciation have resulted in rising average loan balances for single-family homeownership. Yet, financing lower balance loans is an essential way for the mortgage industry to facilitate access to affordable, lower-valued homes,” said MBA’s VP of Industry Analysis Marina Walsh, CMB.

The Committee will continue to assess additional information and its implications for monetary policy at future meetings with an inflationary goal of 2%.

“We continue to see pockets of the U.S. housing market where the foundation is a bit shakier—or more solid—than others, based on important quarterly metrics,” said Rob Barber, CEO at ATTOM.

Although mortgage rates remain above 7%, the first week of October has historically been the best time to buy a home due to a drop in demand and reduced home prices.

“Annual home price growth regained momentum in July, which mostly reflects strong appreciation from earlier this year,” said Selma Hepp, Chief Economist for CoreLogic.

"August was another rough month for mortgage borrowers from an interest rate perspective," said Andy Walden, VP of Enterprise Research and Strategy at Black Knight, now a part of ICE.

Efforts to use this digitized data for urban development must also keep in mind how this sort of data has been used historically. A new post from David Luberoff, Deputy Director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, dives into the concept.

“The worsening housing affordability crisis has an outsized impact on Gen Zers and millennials because they’re much less likely to own a home than older generations,” said Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather.

“Mortgage rates once again breached the 7% mark in August, hitting a 22-year high and doing no favors for consumer sentiment,” said Doug Duncan, Fannie Mae SVP and Chief Economist.