- Corelogic’s Second Quarter U.S. Equity Report indicated that over three-quarters-of -a-million properties regained equity, while 4.4 million remain in negative equity over the same period. Aggregate negative equity fell $28 billion from $338 billion to $309 billion. According to Corelogic this reduction is caused both by foreclosure completions and home price appreciation.
- According to a study by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) new home construction is trailing job growth in major metro areas. NAR sees this as the primary reason for the affordability crisis now gripping the nation in many of the same areas.
- The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) against certain real estate agencies and individual realtors who are alleged to have treated black and latino buyers in Jackson Mississippi in drastically different ways than they treated equally qualified white buyers. According to the NFHA complaint white buyers were shown a wider variety of homes while black and latino purchasers were largely steer into majority minority neighborhoods.
- The NHFA, in a related vein, also released a study entitled Where You Live Matters – 2015 Fair Housing Trends Report which draws a stark parallel between the historic lack of investment in communities of color and the racial disparities in educational, social, and economic outcomes that have resulted.
- NYU’s Furman Center has released a Brief entitled Black and Latino Segregation and Socioeconomic Outcomes which finds that the burgeoning Latino population in the U.S. is largely “inheriting the segregated urban structures experienced by African Americans.” This segregation seems to lead to reduced socioeconomic prospects when compared with whites, including lower earnings, more violent crime, less access to credit and lower homeownership rates.
Tag Archives: CoreLogic
Thursday’s Advocacy & Think Tank Round-Up
- Corelogic’s recently released, Home Price Indicator (HPI) predicts that home prices will appreciate 4.7% from July 2015 to July 2016.
- MakeRoom’s campaign to bring attention to the millions of families who struggle to pay rent. Every first of the month, when rent due, the organization arranges a concert in the living room of a family struggling to pay rent. On September first the R&B group Miguel played in the home of Devona. Devona, a single mother from Detroit, Michigan who is also raising a nice and nephew, pays over half of her income in rent to keep her family in a safe suburban home.
- The National Housing Conference (NHC) will be hosting a webinar on September 8th to discuss the ways in which affordable housing development policies are linked to educational outcomes and ways in which organizations are addressing the issue.
From Owners to Renters
Frank Nothaft
CoreLogic’s July issue of The MarketPulse has in interesting piece by Frank Nothaft, Rental Remains Robust (registration required). It opens,
A vibrant rental market has been an outgrowth of the Great Recession and housing market crash. Apartment vacancy rates are down to their lowest levels since the 1980s, rental apartment construction is the most robust in more than 25 years, rents are up, and apartment building values are at or above their prior peaks. But the rental market is more than just apartments in high-rise buildings.
Apartments in buildings with five or more residences account for 42 percent of the U.S. rental stock. Additionally, two-to-four-family housing units comprise an additional 18 percent of the rental stock, and one-family homes make up the remaining 40 percent.
The foreclosure crisis resulted in a large number of homes being acquired by investors and turned into rentals. Between 2006 and 2013, three million single-family detached houses were added to the nation’s rental stock, an increase of 32 percent. The increase in the single-family rental stock has been geographically broad based, but has impacted some markets more than others.
* * *
While the growth in the rental stock has been large, so has been the demand. Some of the households seeking rental houses were displaced through foreclosure. Others were millennials who had begun or were planning families, but were unable or unwilling to buy. (1-2, footnotes omitted)
Nothaft’s focus is on the investment outlook for rental housing, but I find that his summary has a lot to offer the housing policy world as well. He describes a large change in the balance between the rental and homeowner housing stock, one that has had an outsized effect on certain communities and certain generations.
Housing policy commentators generally feel that the federal government provides way too much support to homeowners (mostly through the tax code) and not enough to renters. Perhaps this demographic shift will spur politicians to rethink that balance. Renters should not be treated like second class citizens.
Thursday’s Advocacy & Think Tank Round-Up
- Corelogic’s Home Price Index for May 2015, reports that home prices are up 6.3% compared to May of 2014 and with Mortgage rates at around 4% – leading to increased demand – areas with high demand and low supply, such as San Francisco are seeing double digit appreciation. Home prices peaked in April 2006 and are still 8.4% below peak.
- Over 1,000 members of Affordable Rental Housing A.C.T.I.O.N. signed a letter to Congress urging both houses to protect, strengthen and expand the Housing Credit and preserve Housing Bonds as it considers tax reform and tax extenders legislation. Specifically, the letter urges Congress to act quickly to approve a minimum 9 percent Housing Credit rate for new construction and substantial rehabilitation, as well as a minimum 4 percent rate for the acquisition of affordable housing.
- Furman Center’s Data Search Tool – is an online application that provides direct access to New York City data compiled by the NYU Furman Center. Visitors to the site can select from a range of variables to create customized maps, downloadable tables, and track trends over time. Variables include, among many others: Housing costs, mortgage lending, tax delinquencies, housing quality.
The State of the Nation’s Sustainable Housing
The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University released its The State of the Nation’s Housing 2015 report. I typically focus on the discussion of the mortgage market in this excellent annual report. Here are some of the mortgage highlights:
- mortgage delinquency rates nationwide have fallen by half since the foreclosure crisis peaked. But the remaining loans that are seriously delinquent (90 or more days past due or in foreclosure) are concentrated in relatively few neighborhoods; (6)
- According to CoreLogic, 10.8 percent of homeowners with mortgages were still underwater on their loans in the fourth quarter of 2014; (8)
- Despite rising prices, homebuying in most parts of the country remained more affordable in 2014 than at any time in the previous two decades except right after the housing crash. In 110 of the 113 largest metros for which at least 20 years of price data are available, payment-to-income ratios for the median-priced home were still below long-run averages. And in nearly a third of these metros, ratios were 20 percent or more below those averages. (22)
The Joint Center believes that “Looser mortgage lending criteria would help. Given that a substantial majority of US households desire to own homes, the challenge is not whether they have the will to become homeowners but whether they will have the means.” (6) I am not sure what to make of that statement. It seems to me that the right question is whether looser mortgage lending criteria would result in long-term housing tenure for new homeowners. In other words, looser mortgage lending criteria that result in future defaults and foreclosures are of no benefit to potential homebuyers. Too few commentators tie mortgage availability to mortgage sustainability. The Joint Center should take a lead role in making that connection.
One last comment, a repetition from my past discussions of Joint Center reports. The State of the Nation’s Housing acknowledges sources of funding for the report but does not directly identify the members of its Policy Advisory Board, which provides “principal funding” for it along with the Ford Foundation. (front matter) The Board includes companies such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which are directly discussed in the report. In the spirit of transparency, the Joint Center should identify all of its funders in the State of the Nation’s Housing report itself. Mainstream journalists would undoubtedly do this. I see no reason why an academic center should not.
Thursday’s Advocacy & Think Tank Round-Up
- On June 23, at 2pm the Urban Land Institute, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and Hart Research are hosting a Virtual Conversation entitled: Housing, Communities, & Messaging that Resonates: Results from Three New Polls (RSVP Here).
- Americans’ housing and community preferences in this rapidly changing landscape,
- where and how Millennials want to live,
- overall satisfaction with government’s prioritization of housing affordability, and
- the most persuasive messaging about affordable housing.
- Corelogic’s Equity Report finds that 245,000 properties regained equity in the first quarter of 2015 – over 90% of properties have positive equity and the percentage of “underwater” mortgages decreased by over 19% year-over year.
HAMP-ered Foreclosure Prevention
The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) released a report, Treasury’s Opportunity to Increase HAMP’s Effectiveness by Reaching More Homeowners in States Underserved by HAMP. The Introduction opens,
TARP’s signature foreclosure prevention program, the Home Affordable Modification Program (“HAMP”), has struggled to reach the expected number of homeowners Treasury envisioned for the program. According to Treasury, TARP’s housing support programs were intended to “help bring relief to responsible homeowners struggling to make their mortgage payments, while preventing neighborhoods and communities from suffering the negative spillover effects of foreclosure.” Treasury announced that HAMP itself aimed “to help as many as three to four million financially struggling homeowners avoid foreclosure by modifying loans to a level that is affordable for borrowers now and sustainable over the long term,.” The only long-term sustainable help provided through HAMP is a permanent mortgage modification, which become effective after the homeowner successfully completes a trial period plan. Through December 31, 2014, according to Treasury data, 1,514,687 homeowners have been able to get into a more affordable permanent HAMP modification (of which, 452,322 homeowners, or 29%, subsequently redefaulted on their HAMP modifications), while there have been 6,165,544 foreclosures nationwide over the same period based on CoreLogic data.” (1, footnotes omitted)
There is a lot of soul searching in this report about why HAMP has been so ineffective and the report offers tweaks to the program to improve it. But perhaps the problem is structural — a program like HAMP was never really in a position to make a bigger impact on the foreclosure crisis.
When compared to the federal government’s intervention during the Great Depression, HAMP seems too modest. President Roosevelt’s Home Owners’ Loan Corporation bought out mortgages from banks in bulk and then refinanced them on more attractive terms than the private sector offered. HAMP, on the other hand, has trouble getting homeowners to apply to the program in the first place.
Bottom line: HAMP is too retail and what we needed and need is something that could be done wholesale.
