Daily Dose

Dedicated, visionary, and optimistic about the future of homeownership, Golding has spent more than 25 years in mortgage finance in both the public and private sector. Prior to joining HUD in 2013, he held several senior positions during a 23-year tenure with Freddie Mac—where he served as SVP of Economics and Policy, Program Executive of Making Home Affordable, SVP of Economics and Strategic Analysis, and SVP of Capital Oversight and Economics. Despite his busy schedule shaping the future of American homeownership, Golding sat down with us this month to address your pressing questions on the FHA, mortgage insurance, housing, down-payment assistance, and more. Editor's note: This select print feature appeared in the July 2015 edition of MReport magazine, available now.

The average fixed mortgage rates have reached new 2015 highs, according to Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS). According to the survey, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 4.08 percent with an average 0.6 point for the week ending July 2, 2015. This is an increase from last week when it averaged 4.02 percent.

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) recently issued the host state loan-to-deposit ratios that the agencies will use to determine compliance with section 109 of the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994. The agencies reported that Utah had the highest loan-to-deposit ratio at 101 percent, while Delaware had the lowest ratio at 47 percent.

Job gains totaled 223,000 in June as the unemployment rate dipped to 5.3 percent, according to the June 2015 Employment Situation released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Thursday. With June's payroll increase, the average monthly job gain for the last 12 months in the United States is 250,000. Job gains in April and May were revised downward to 187,000 and 254,000, respectively, which was a combined 60,000 lower than previously reported.

Although home prices have continued to rise at a slow pace for most markets, they are still at normal price levels or undervalued, according to the CoreLogic Market Condition Indicators. However, Mark Liu, principal economist at CoreLogic identified that seven of the top 100 metropolitan markets—four in Texas alone—have been identified as being overvalued, an increase from four markets in October 2014.

The Third Federal Savings and Loan Association of Cleveland, a wholly owned subsidiary of TFS Financial Corporation, recently reported the results of its 2015 company-run stress test that is conducted in accordance with regulations of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Millennials are leaning toward single-family homes when browsing the housing market. A recent analysis from Fannie Mae titled “Rent or Own, Young Adults Still Prefer Single-Family Homes” determined that householders aged 25-34 were more likely to occupy a single-family home in 2013 than in 2006, during the peak of the last housing cycle.

More money is being put into construction to meet constant demand from consumers. The U.S Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce announced today that construction spending for May reached an estimated amount of $1,035.8 billion, 0.8 percent increase from the revised April figure of $1,027 billion. Residential construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $359.5 billion in May, 0.3 percent above the revised April estimate of $358.5 billion.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has issued a request for information regarding its consumer complaint database after going live with an enhanced version of the database last week, according to the CFPB. The CFPB's new enhanced public-facing consumer complaint database, which went live on June 25, included more than 7,700 consumer accounts of complaints that consumers have had with financial companies with regards to the way their mortgages, accounts, credit cards, debt collection, and other services are handled.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac CEOs are expected to get multimillion-dollar increases to their paycheck approved by the GSE’s regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), according to recent 8K Filings (Mayopoulos and Layton) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). On June 29, 2015, the FHFA approved changes to the compensation of Fannie Mae’s CEO Timothy J. Mayopoulos, and Freddie Mac’s CEO Donald H. Layton to address recent objectives outlined by the FHFA. Both salary adjustments will go into effect on July 1, 2015.