Housing Policy

housing policy

Student Loan Debt Delaying Home Purchases

First-time home buyers and millennials are having a pretty difficult time keeping pace in the current housing market, and student loan debt is a significant part of the problem. The National Association of Realtors and American Student Assistance study, Student Loan Debt and Housing Report for 2017, provides a number of interesting examples of how debt is keeping home purchase activity subdued. The study The amount of student loans in the United States now exceeds $1.45 trillion, and the growth shows no signs of slowing. One of the more interesting findings of the study is [...]

Foreign Buyers Still Flooding U.S. Real Estate Market

The the volume of foreign buyers buying U.S. residential real estate rose dramatically during the latest 12-month survey from the National Association of Realtors. The 2017 Profile of International Activity in U.S. Residential Real Estate shoes that the dollar volume of purchases by foreign buyers rose from $102.6 billion in 2016 to $153 billion in the latest 12-month period ending in March. In all, foreign buyers purchased 284,455 U.S. residential properties accounting for 5 percent of existing home sales and 10% of existing home sales by dollar volume. If you were wondering what's been driving the [...]

New Home Sales Rebound In May

The Census Bureau reported a rebound for new home sales in May. New residential home sales posted at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 610,000. This was 2.9 percent higher than the revised April numbers and 8.9 percent higher than a year ago. The median price of a new home contracted in May was $345,800 while the average new home price in May came in at $406,400. Just like we saw with existing home sales this week, median home prices hit a new all-time high. New home sales volume, while up from last month, is [...]

NAR: Existing Home Sales Cool In February

The National Association of Realtors reported that existing home sales cooled to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.48 million in February. Sales of existing homes fell 3.7 from January levels but were 5.4 percent higher year-over-year. NAR continues to fret about an inventory shortage when the real culprit is elevated home prices in general. Existing home sales are still treading at levels well below the previous cycle peak. As I have said repeatedly, there is no shortage of homes for sale. There is a shortage of affordable homes for sale, homes that real working [...]

Financialization Of Housing And The Disturbing Gap In New Home Sales

The financialization of the U.S. housing market has led to a rather disturbing gap in new home sales relative to existing home sales. This is a subject I was referencing this week when I mentioned the problem builders are facing with the lack of affordable land to build new homes on. Today the Census Bureau reported new home sales for January came in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 555,000. Previous months were also revised lower, with November taking a significant haircut. On a year-over-year basis January new home sales were up 5.5 percent. [...]

NAR Finally Gets Real About Home Affordability Issues

The National Association of Realtors is out with a new method of gauging home affordability. As part of NAR's look at the the growing rift between housing availability and home affordability, NAR has developed a new affordability distribution curve and a home affordability score. The new monthly research is designed to look at home affordability conditions among different income percentiles, gauging how many homes on the market are actually affordable to various buyer income groups. The new affordability distribution curve and score show that many U.S. homes are no longer affordable to typical prospective buyers. [...]

Texas Realtors Unwittingly Paying For Bad TAMU Economic Research

Texas Realtors are paying for some bad economic research. That's the only conclusion I can come to after looking at the current situation where highly educated economists are giving short shrift to the underlying causes of Texas home price inflation and market distortions. While the Fed has abdicated its responsibility to the American public, TAMU economists seem to be cooperating with the Fed in offering "alternative facts" surrounding the declining affordability of housing and real estate market imbalances. In a previous post I posited a guess as to why this is happening. After looking at [...]

By |2021-04-21T11:24:58+00:00February 8th, 2017|Education, Housing Policy, Politics, Real Estate, Spin Cycle, Video|0 Comments

Monkey Business – Expert Says Affordable Homes Are Going Away

Affordable homes are going away. With the prospect of rising rates, now is the time to buy a home. That is apparently the opinion of Dr. Luis Torres, a research economist with the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M. Torres, in a rather interesting piece in the Houston Business Journal seems to be confident that Houston's real estate market is on the road to recovery:  “I can say this with some certainty that the worst of the downturn is behind us.” I'm not surprised that HBJ would print a piece like this (after all it is [...]

Mortgage Rates Rip To Highest Level Since July 2015

Katy Texas mortgage rates rose to their highest levels since July 2015 as we ended the week. That new home you may have been looking to purchase just became more expensive. Unless you already had a mortgage rate locked in, higher rates likely means higher home payments or diminished expectations. As Friday came to a close, mortgage brokers were discussing the wreckage of higher yields and looking at a new interest rate landscape, at least in the short term. Mortgage News Daily explained the closing of the week in the mortgage market... "The most prevalent [...]

Debt, Deficits & Housing – The Smoke & Mirrors “Recovery”

Many among the status quo have defended the last 8 years as a productive "recovery" from the abyss of financial armageddon unleashed by our criminal banking sector. The efficacy of the recovery depends on the person responding to the question. For the vast majority of the U.S. population, there has been no recovery, but instead a steady decline. If you have been paying attention to the early release of season 5 of 'House of Cards', speaking of the email data dump exposing our corrupt political machine for all to see, the reasons behind the phony [...]

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