Tag Archives: First American

According to First American’s Potential Home Sales Model, the nationwide sales pace will begin to settle into a new normal, as potential existing-home sales decreased in June, suggesting they may have hit bottom.

MortgagePoint speaks with mortgage servicing execs from BOK Financial, Carrington, the NMSA, PHH Mortgage Corporation, and Servbank about the unusual times and unusual opportunities the industry faces midway through 2023.

While millennials prevail as the largest generation in U.S. history, a new study from First American revealed some 51% of them are homeowners. At age 41, the millennial homeownership rate is 62%, closely following Gen X at 64%, significantly narrowing the homeownership gap over the past decade.

“U.S. housing starts in May came in above consensus expectations at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.63 million, which is 21.7% above the revised April estimate of 1.34 million and 5.7% above the May 2022 rate of 1.54 million,” said First American Economist Ksenia Potapov.

“The Committee seeks to achieve maximum employment and inflation at the rate of 2% over the longer run. In support of these goals, the Committee decided to maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 5.00% to 5.25%,” the Fed said in a prepared statement.

“Affordability declined month-over-month in all of the 50 markets we track, but some markets saw a much sharper decline than others,” said First American Chief Economist Mark Fleming.

“Although buyers, sellers, and builders are all more optimistic about the housing market, asking home price growth is easing and the typical home sales price is slipping. These point to the nudge that buyers need to act on their improving outlook,” said Realtor.com Chief Economist Danielle Hale.

Elevated rates continue to both impact homebuyer affordability and weaken demand for refinancing, as the MBA reports overall app volume fell 1.2% week-over-week.

While nominal house price appreciation slowed in response to affordability-constrained demand, new data revealed falling house prices could cause foreclosures to jump, according to the First American Real House Price Index,

“While the NFCI Credit index indicated that credit tightened in March, which reduced housing market potential, the credit tightening was modest and far from recent pandemic lows, and certainly nothing like the Great Financial Crisis period,” said Mark Fleming, Chief Economist at First American.