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PLTA is proud to offer ALTA News to members
ALTA News: Headlines and news from various media sources, keeping you
"in the know" about issues impacting business and the real estate and
mortgage markets.
U.S. employers added a booming 256,000 jobs in December, shrugging off high labor costs, slowing sales and uncertainty about President-elect Donald Trump’s economic policies.
The Palisades real estate market will come to a "standstill" for some time as fires rage and tens of thousands of residents evacuate the area, according to an industry economist. Deals will be delayed until the full extent of the damage is assessed, but movement in the market will kick back up again for homes that are left unscathed, Redfin reported.
California’s insurance authority rushed to impose a yearlong ban on policy cancellations in parts of Los Angeles hardest hit by the apocalyptic wildfires that continued to sow destruction as of Friday.
Down payment assistance (DPA) is an important tool for helping to qualify borrowers who struggle to to raise enough money for a down payment when buying a home. That’s especially true in the government’s FHA-insured loan program, designed to assist home buyers who aren’t likely to pass muster for conventional financing.
Late Tuesday, the Department of Justice announced its third redlining settlement against a non-bank mortgage company under its Combatting Redlining Initiative, compelling the Altamonte Springs, Fla.-based The Mortgage Firm to establish a $1.75 million loan subsidy fund to resolve allegations the mortgage company redlined neighborhoods in Miami-Dade County.
We are buying our first home and are stretching our savings to pay for the down payment and closing costs, not to mention the moving expenses. Our lender sent us our closing cost estimate, which showed that “Owners Title Insurance” was optional, even though we were required to purchase “Lenders Title Insurance.” What is the difference, and why do we even need it, let alone both types?
Apocalyptic and deadly fires continue to rage across Los Angeles, with more than 180,000 residents under evacuation orders and thousand of buildings destroyed. Five people have died, and officials are unclear on where the real death toll stands. The loss of homes runs the gamut, ranging in median listing prices from $760,000 to more than $6 million in areas including Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades and Malibu, which is famously home to a range of celebrities.
The affordability strain caused by high mortgage rates and historically elevated prices, combined with the growth in inventory and skyrocketing homeowners insurance premiums, is likely to cause a cooldown in demand and a drop in prices across Florida, experts have said.
First-time homebuyers currently face one of the toughest housing markets in decades, but in the right cities they can still find glimmers of hope. A new report from the Realtor.com economic research team identifies the best markets for first-time homebuyers in 2025, based on local prices, incomes, amenities, and several other factors.
Mortgage company Bayview Asset Management will face a $20 million penalty over a data breach and its alleged failure to cooperate with regulators in the aftermath. Agencies in 53 jurisdictions, led by regulators in California, Maryland, North Carolina and Washington state, took coordinated action against Bayview, which entered into a settlement, CSBS said.
Mortgage credit availability increased in December, rising 0.7% compared with November to a score of 96.6 on the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Mortgage Credit Availability Index (MCAI). When the index score decreases, it indicates that lending standards are tightening, while increases are indicative of loosening credit. The index was benchmarked to 100 in March 2012.
Commercial real estate investors have much to look forward to in 2025, both from an operational standpoint and an investment transaction point of view, said John Chang, national director of research and advisory services at Marcus & Millichap. Describing 2024 as a choppy year for CRE, Chang noted that consumer sentiment and small business optimism began to tick up in November and December.
No sign of normalcy lies ahead for the 2025 housing market, according to First American Deputy Chief Economist Odeta Kushi’s latest forecast. The five major predictions include the trajectory of mortgage rates, home prices, inventory, home sales, and the new construction market.
The U.S. will see between 3,000 to 4,000 such organizations begin to form in 2025 to total 373,000 nationwide. The number represents a 10.8% jump from the year-end 2024 total of 369,000, according to research from the Foundation for Community Association Research.
Ally Financial Inc. will cut jobs, end mortgage originations and consider strategic alternatives for its credit-card business as borrowers have struggled to pay down costly debt.
Private employers added 122,000 seasonally adjusted U.S. jobs in December, according to a Wednesday report from payroll company ADP. Dow Jones economists expected 136,000. “The labor market downshifted to a more modest pace of growth in the final month of 2024, with a slowdown in both hiring and pay gains,” ADP Chief Economist Nela Richardson said.
Buffalo, New York is expected to be the hottest major housing market in the U.S., for the second year in a row, according to Zillow.
Americans prefer to stay put these days — and their resistance to relocating is contributing to long-standing challenges in the housing market. In a new survey from Redfin, a real estate brokerage, roughly a third of homeowners say they never, ever plan to sell their current home.
After nearly three years of grappling with an expensive housing market, homebuyers are showing signs of getting used to it. Though the data is still preliminary, it points to an emerging trend in which house hunters are adjusting to higher mortgage rates. Home transactions are broadly up over the past few months, and consumer sentiment toward buying a house is warming up.
Federal Reserve officials at their December meeting expressed concern about inflation and the impact that President-elect Donald Trump’s policies could have, indicating that they would be moving more slowly on interest rate cuts because of the uncertainty, minutes released Wednesday showed.
Deadly wildfires scorched the upscale enclave of Pacific Palisades and other parts of Los Angeles overnight Tuesday, killing at least two people, engulfing close to 5,000 acres of land, and ravaging a minimum of 1,000 structures. Whipped by hurricane-force winds, the inferno sent terrified residents fleeing from their properties in the seaside community that is home to a long list of Hollywood A-listers.
Mortgage rates last week moved higher for the fourth week in a row. That caused already very weak mortgage demand to drop even further. Total mortgage application volume fell 3.7% compared with the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index.
Mortgage rates have been moving against home buyers in recent weeks. But there is a sliver of hope on the horizon.
Down payment assistance (DPA) is an important tool for helping to qualify borrowers who struggle to to raise enough money for a down payment when buying a home. That’s especially true in the government’s FHA-insured loan program, designed to assist home buyers who aren’t likely to pass muster for conventional financing.
The U.S. government on Tuesday issued new rules to remove roughly $49 billion in unpaid medical debts from Americans’ credit reports, even as debt collectors and incoming Republican leaders have signaled they might try to overturn the policy entering the Trump administration.
The troubled U.S. office industry is starting the new year with a problem it hasn’t contended with in years: Some business districts face a looming shortage of top-shelf workspace.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed mortgage giants, could be headed for privatization under Donald Trump‘s second term, a move experts say might drive mortgage rates higher in a housing market already plagued by affordability challenges.
Redfin has identified houses that clocked the heftiest sale prices in 2024. While the median that homes sold for clocked in at $383,725 for the four weeks ending Dec. 22, according to Redfin, some transactions for homes in the U.S. brought in eye-popping amounts significantly higher than that.
In December, 30-year refinance rates averaged around 6.52%, according to Zillow data. This is 10 basis points below the previous month's average and 10 basis points above December's average 30-year mortgage rate for purchase mortgages. But recently, rates have been trending higher across the board.
A Virginia-based construction firm believes they have produced part of the solution to the affordable housing crisis. Fleetwood Homes has produced the first HUD-approved single-section duplex home in the country.
CFPB Director Rohit Chopra has bombarded the financial industry with a flurry of last-minute rules that have drawn the ire of banks and congressional Republicans. Agency rules that get overturned by Congress using the Congressional Review Act come with a major catch — once the rule is repealed, the agency cannot issue another rule that is "substantially the same.
In the complaint filed early in January, the plaintiffs alleged new rules implemented by the Department of Housing and Urban Development last year were unconstitutional and emphasized they would likely suppress production of lower-priced new units eligible for certain government-backed loans.
The IRS has dropped a raft of changes, big and small, to the U.S. tax code that could shift how much you owe — or save — in 2025. From bigger deductions to higher limits on health-related savings accounts, the changes reflect the government’s continued fight to curb inflation and resulting financial strain.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Monday that the manufactured home loan lender Vanderbilt Mortgage, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary Clayton Homes, ignored red flags that sent many borrowers into bankruptcy, default and ultimately out of their homes.
The U.S. housing market crawled to a standstill last year—and while the latest projections show that 2025 is expected to bring only limited relief to buyers and sellers, there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon.
Just over two weeks after Success Real Estate suddenly shut its doors on December 14th, three lawsuits have been filed against the agency with offices in Marshfield and Braintree. Twelve out of the 13 plaintiffs listed in the legal documents are real estate agents who worked for Success Real Estate. They claim the agency’s owner, Stephen Webster, stole and/or embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars that were supposed to be in escrow.
In an effort to expand affordable housing, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said the program provides affordable fixed-rate mortgages, closing cost assistance and up to $40,000 per household in student loan relief to borrowers who buy a home in Illinois.
The U.S. economy has added more than two million jobs over the past year. But more people who are out of work are having a hard time getting back in. As of November, more than 7 million Americans were unemployed, meaning they didn’t have work and were trying to find it.
The changes add some steps that would have to be taken before Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could exit following statements from a Trump ally indicating plans for a near-term release.
Mortgage rates might ride up and down in January and finish lower than where they started, like a road trip that begins in the mountains and ends at the beach.
The jobless claims data again showed why mortgage rates continue to be elevated, confirming that the labor market isn’t breaking. The labor market is getting softer but hasn’t broken yet, as it has before every recession post World War II.
The Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) monthly loan monitoring survey revealed an increase in total mortgage loans in forbearance to 0.50% as of November 30, 2024.
After months of house-hunting, Raegan Bartlo and her husband finally found their dream home in a small West Virginia community just a few hours from Washington, D.C. But that dream became a nightmare as a few days before the closing, Bartlo received an email she thought was from her title company. The email provided instructions on how to wire the money for closing. She wired the $255,000 down payment as per the email’s directions.
As the United States economy continues its recovery from the shock of the coronavirus pandemic, things are certainly looking up—but not everyone will have job security in 2025.
Housing market conditions should improve in 2025. But prices are likely to continue rising. Mortgage rates are expected to ease this year, which may help boost demand. Leading forecasts predict that home prices will increase somewhere between 1.3% and 3.6% in 2025.
Uprooting your life to move to another state is a major undertaking—but, in 2024, five states saw an influx of residents doing just that. The states with the highest number of outbound moves this year were Louisiana, California, Illinois, South Dakota and New York, according to Atlas Van Lines.
Mortgage rates are up for a third straight week to the highest since July, further hindering demand in the already-stagnant housing market. Freddie Mac's latest Primary Mortgage Market Survey, released Thursday, showed that the average rate on the benchmark 30-year fixed mortgage jumped to 6.91%, up from last week's reading of 6.85%.
There’s good news in the housing market to close out 2024: there’s a lot more supply. The bad news: a lot of that supply is stale, sitting unsold for much longer than usual. Active listings in November were 12.1% higher than they were in November 2023 and hit the highest level since 2020, according to a new report from Redfin.
A sharp rise in mortgage interest rates toward the end of December took its toll on mortgage demand, hitting just as the housing market entered its typically slowest stretch of the year.
As temperatures plummeted over the festive season, so did the level of activity in the residential real estate market, which experienced its strongest seasonal slowdown in nearly two years. The average home lingered on the market for nine days longer than in December 2023. In November, homes spent an average of 62 days on the market. Inventory also plunged 8.6% from November—the largest decrease since January 2023.
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