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The U.S. is embarking on its ninth year of economic expansion and Fannie Mae is predicting economic growth rebound. Consumer spending growth is expected to return to its position as the biggest contributor to economic growth. With labor and inventory shortages still prevalent, the housing market hasn’t changed very much and home prices are still on the rise. Based on their research, Fannie expects mortgage rates to remain supportive, but the outlook on existing home sales remains cautious.

Purdy Enterprise has selected FotoNotes as its technology solution for managing property inspections, maintenance work orders and other field service activities. FotoNotes’ mobile app and cloud platform solution provides companies full visibility and control of HUD FSM inspections, work orders, and field service operations. FotoNotes also provides solutions for a wide variety of other use cases, including estimating, construction, renovations, and turns.

Inventory was on everyone’s mind last week, and in the week ahead the New Home Sales Report and Existing Home Sales Report for May will be released Friday and Wednesday, respectively. With home buying putting undue stress on first time homebuyers, and a severe lack of inventory due to an unwillingness to sell and fewer new houses being built, it is becoming increasingly difficult for those that desire to purchase. The previous New Home Sales report was at nearly half a million—569,000—while existing homes counted 5.57 million sales, not enough to provide a relief for the growing market.

Calyx Software announced that Portfolio Underwrite is now available to Point and PointCentral clients. Portfolio Underwriter allows portfolio lenders to customize credit decisioning and safely originate non-agency loans that they intend to put on their balance sheets. It captures a portfolio lender’s program guidelines within its engine and delivers a rules-based underwriting decision in seconds and results of the decision are documented into a findings report.

It’s now the third month straight that U.S. homebuilding has fell—considering the U.S. is currently in a housing shortage, this isn’t good news. According to the latest report from the U.S. Census Bureau, this is the lowest level housing starts have been at in eight months. The biggest drop in housing starts was in the South and Midwest, while the West slightly rose and Northeast stayed stagnant.

As the mortgage industry attempted to digest the cumbersome alphabet soup of data standards and regulation, Fannie Mae innovated to deliver a recipe for certainty.

housing prices are on the rise this summer selling season even though inventory is at an extreme low, according to a recent report. May held many records for the report including the rise in home prices. When over 1,000 buyers were asked what a 5 percent rate hike would do to their home buying plans, despite the recent rate hike, buyers overall feel their search won’t be affected.

When it comes to homeownership, things can get confusing. It was recently reported that almost half of homebuyers were unable to answer questions about key mortgage qualification criteria and consumers are in agreement that homeownership education is helpful and should occur earlier in the process. So what needs to be done in order to educate while not delaying closing?

Housing inventory is so limited, even Google has taken notice. On Wednesday, the technology giant announced its own efforts to alleviate the ever-tight (and ever-expensive) housing market of Silicon Valley through an investment in modular housing. The company will purchase 300 modular home units from startup Factory OS, a deal Factory’s CEO says is worth $25 to $30 million. Housing prices in Google’s home base San Francisco have risen nearly 100 percent since 2009, and inventory has been dropping steadily over the past year, driving demand—and prices—even higher. Year-to-date, home prices in the city have appreciated 5 percent—the second-most of all major U.S. markets.

The Fed has voted for the second time this year to raise interest rates, a decision that was hinted at back in March by Janet Yellen, FOMC Board of Governors Chair. The FOMC is of the opinion that waiting too long to scale back accommodations could potentially cause a rapid increase in rates, which could disrupt the market and send the economy into another recession. It is currently unclear how the hike in interest rates will affect mortgage rates.