Obsolete Certainty

Default notices, auction sale notices, and actual bank repossessions were received on a total of 1,961,894 homes, or one in every 78 households, during the most recent six month period according to the Mid-Year 2010 U.S Foreclosure Market Report issued by RealtyTrac. These findings represent a 5 percent decline in filings from the last half of 2009, but an increase of 8 percent from the first half of last year. Perhaps the good news is that the year-over-year change was almost totally due to a jump in bank repossessions, which were up five percent while default and auction notices were down 10.4 percent since the first half of last year. In June there were a total of 313,841 filings, a decrease of nearly 3 percent from May and down nearly 7 percent from the previous June. It was the sixteenth…(read more)

An aggressive stand against fraud by lenders is having an impact according to a new study, but attempted fraud is still a problem in a significant percentage of loan applications and the nature of the fraud itself is changing. The 2010 Mortgage Fraud Trends Report released today by CoreLogic is based on a proprietary predictive fraud model developed by the company which uses pattern recognition to determine a level of risk each quarter. The model produces a Fraud Index from a representative sample of 80 million loan applications spanning the years from 2005 to 2009. According to the report, fraud risk in the mortgage industry is down 25 percent since its peak in the third quarter of 2007 . Still, there are significant trends in mortgage fraud types and loan performance but, the study found…(read more)

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) today released its Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending July 9, 2010. The MBA's loan application survey covers over 50% of all US residential mortgage loan applications taken by mortgage bankers, commercial banks, and thrifts. The data gives economists a snapshot view of consumer demand for mortgage loans. In a low mortgage rate environment, a trend of increasing refinance applications implies consumers are seeking out a lower monthly payment. If consumers are able to reduce their monthly mortgage payment and increase disposable income through refinancing, it can be a positive for the overall economy (creates more consumer spending or allows debtors to pay down personal liabilities like credit cards). A falling trend of purchase…(read more)

While an idealist measures homelessness in terms of the cost in human suffering and loss opportunity, the pragmatic, practical, and perhaps less empathetic are more likely to respond to quantitative analysis. Those people should be aware that there is also a heavy financial cost tied to homelessness that affects governments and taxpayers at all levels. The following are some of the statistics taken from the recent report Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness published by the US Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH). The homeless use mental health or substance abuse treatment programs at nearly twice the rate (52 percent to 23 percent) of comparable non-homeless low income populations. Health care costs for people enrolled in the federal Collaborative Initiative…(read more)

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has issued subpoenas to 64 companies seeking loan documents and other information related to private-label mortgage-backed securities (PLS). The PLS are those that the two government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae invested in during the housing boom. FHFA refused to divulge the identities of the parties to whom the subpoenas have been addressed, beyond saying that they were directed to the trustees and servicers controlling or holding the documentation. The purpose was to obtain loan files and other transaction documents pertaining to the PLS in order to analyze them and determine whether losses sustained by the GSEs from their investments are "the legal responsibilities of others." The subpoenas target only those…(read more)

International customers accounted for about $66 billion or seven percent of residential real estate purchases in the U.S. during the calendar year ending March 31. These figures were released Wednesday by The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) in its 2010 Profile of International Home Buying Activity . NAR surveyed realtors and found that 28 percent of its members who responded have worked with at least one international client during that period. This is up from 23 percent who reported such associations in the 2009 survey. 18 percent of respondents indicated they had completed at least one sale with a foreign client, up from 12 percent a year ago. These sales are not concentrated; only 1 percent of Realtors reported that they obtained 75 percent or more of their sales from this market…(read more)

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) today released its Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending July 2, 2010. The Mortgage Bankers Association application survey covers over 50% of all US residential mortgage loan applications taken by mortgage bankers, commercial banks, and thrifts. The data gives economists a look into consumer demand for mortgage loans. In a low mortgage rate environment, a trend of increasing refinance applications implies consumers are seeking out a lower monthly payment which can increase disposable income and consumer spending (or give consumers a chance to pay down other debts like credit cards). A falling trend of purchase applications indicates a decline in home buying interest, a negative for the housing industry and the economy as a whole. Excerpts…(read more)

The latest iteration of the annual Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) American Housing Survey (AHS) found that homes in the U.S. are continuing to grow in size and complexity even since the start of the housing collapse. HUD released a brief summary of the survey results late last week and the data is available on line to researchers who canaccess it using SAS. The final report which is due shortly promises to be massive; the last survey in 2007 was 642 largely tabular pages. HUD has conducted the survey every other year since 1973. "This important survey provides us a clear picture of the American home and its occupants," said Dr. Raphael Bostic, HUD's Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research. "The housing crisis makes clear the need for continued…(read more)

The simple numbers in subgroups like individuals, families, and youth do not begin to explain homelessness. Within each of those subgroups are not only additional population segments, but a menu of problems that have led to their personal crisis. Much of the data in the report we have been citing, Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness , came from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)'s Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) for 2009. That report gathered its data from a single-night Point-in-Time (PIT) national count of the homeless taken in January, 2009 and an ongoing longitudinal database collected from 334 communities which represented nearly 3000 counties and over 1000 cities that contributed to the Homeless Management Information System…(read more)

The National Association of Realtors released the Pending Home Sales Index today. NAR's Pending Home Sales Index measures the number of home purchase contracts that were signed in the monthly reporting period. Once "pending" sales contracts are closed, they are considered an existing home sale. Because the Pending Home Sales index tells us how many contracts were signed, it is consider a forward indicator of existing home sales. A signed contract is not counted as an existing home sale until the transaction actually closes. In developing the model for the index, it was demonstrated that the level of monthly pending home sales parallels the level of closed existing-home sales in the following two months. Excerpts from the Release… The Pending Home Sales Index, a forward-looking…(read more)