Would-be home buyers and refinancing homeowners both receded from the mortgage market last week as mortgage rates surged to their highest averages in nearly five years. The Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index showed that total application volume, which includes home purchases and refinances, dropped 2.5 percent last week and are now 3.3 percent lower than a year ago.Refinance volume took most of the hit, dropping 4 percent
DocuSign, the e-signature company that helped usher in the era of digital real estate closings, debuted as an initial public offering on April 27 and is off to a strong start. Shares of DocuSign ended up 37 percent higher by the end of its first day of trading on the Nasdaq. DocuSign is NAR’s official and exclusive eSignature provider under the REALTOR Benefits® Program and an NAR Strategic Investment Company.DocuSign priced its IPO at $29 a
Student housing has long been attractive to real estate investors. So where are developers adding the most inventory? Student housing developers aren’t branching out much, but instead are staying by larger universities they know can deliver.“Tier one markets continue to attract the most development and are still being targeted by the institutional capital that is pouring into the space,” Taylor Gunn, the student housing analytics lead for M
New Jersey homeowners pay the most in property taxes in the nation, and homeowners there also find taxes make up some of the highest percentages of their total housing costs in the nation. A new study by SmartAsset, a personal finance resource, found that seven cities—five of which are in New Jersey—had property taxes that were more than 30 percent of the cost of owning a home. The average effective property tax in New Jersey is 2.19 percent,
Employment numbers are on the rise across most of the country, but job growth is strongest in the West and South. Utah posted the highest growth, at 3.3 percent. Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia saw annualized growth between 0.2 percent and 1.4 percent year over year in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.Idaho and Nevada have the nation’s fastest-growing populations, which increased at rates of 2.2 percent and 2 pe
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says it has fixed what’s become known as an information “black hole” in the Know Before You Owe mortgage rules, and the agency is attempting to provide greater clarity to borrowers when it comes to disclosing increases in closing costs. Under a new amendment to the mortgage rules, the CFPB clarifies when lenders are allowed to pass increased closing costs on to consumers and makes the disclosure of
Millennials purchased 36 percent of homes last year, which is the highest share of any age group, according to the National Association of REALTORS®. But faced with one of the tightest, most competitive housing markets in years, they’re being pushed out of some of the the nation’s largest and priciest cities.Therefore, young home shoppers are relocating to more affordable parts of the country. Realtor.com® identified cities with the highest
Freddie Mac is debuting a new 3 percent down payment option for qualified first-time buyers that could put it in direct competition with the Federal Housing Administration’s low down payment mortgage. The mortgage financing giant announced Thursday that it is rolling out a new conventional 3 percent down payment option called HomeOne, which will not have any geographic or income restrictions.Freddie’s expansion into small down payment loan p
Over the last year, more Americans became homeowners as the number of renters continued to decrease. The homeownership rate in the first quarter was unchanged at 64.2 percent, higher than last year’s 63.6 percent, the Census Department reported Thursday. This is also the fifth consecutive quarter of yearly increases in the ownership rate.The homeownership rate has been gradually climbing back since hitting a 50-year low in 2016. The rate peake
Mortgage rates continued their climb this week, reaching their highest level since 2013.“Higher Treasury yields, driven by rising commodity prices, more Treasury issuances, and the steady stream of solid economic news are behind the uptick in rates over the past week,” says Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. “Despite the increase in borrowing costs, demand for home purchase credit remains solid.” The Mortgage Bankers Associatio
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