Daily Dose

HUD Secretary Julián Castro, whose name has been bantered for months as a possible vice presidential candidate, joined Realtor.com Chief Economist Jonathan Smoke in a conversation Monday evening about millennial housing held at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. In the conversation, Secretary Castro and Smoke addressed a number of questions surrounding America's most talked about generation and how they are faring the housing market amid numerous regulatory changes.

In 2014, the market share of independent mortgage companies rose to 47 percent for home purchase loans and 42 percent for refinance loans, the highest those shares have been at any point in the last 20 years, meaning nonbank mortgage companies have more than regained their market share they lost due to the Great Recession.

With interest rates lower than they have been since 2012, now is likely the best time to purchase a home, according to Trulia’s most recent Rent vs. Buy Report.

With so many positive reports on the housing market thus far in 2015, economists believe that growth in 2016 will keep the upward trend going, but not without a few headwinds.

New single-family home sales in September 2015 fell dramatically to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 468,000, down 11.5 percent from the revised August rate of 529,000, according to estimates released jointly Monday by the U.S. Census Bureau and HUD.

Black Knight Financial Services' Data and Analytics division released its August 2015 Home Price Index report, finding that U.S. home prices were up 0.3 percent in August and up 5.5 percent year-over-year.

The traditional mortgage lending days are nearly over. Technology is taking the industry by storm with new innovations that are moving mortgage lending closer to a completely online process.

All-cash transactions comprised nearly 31 percent of all single-family residential home sales nationwide in July 2015, marking a decline of more than three full percentage points year-over-year, according to CoreLogic cash sales data released on Friday.

As consumers purchase more homes, remain current on mortgage payments thanks to low rates, and employment continues to grow, the housing market continues to show improvement.

Millennials often face many obstacles when trying to purchase a home such as financial hardships and the inability to afford the down payment, a task that is much more difficult for them compared to their predecessors.