Market Studies

Freddie Mac's April prediction for GDP growth of 2.6 percent is a slight decline from March's forecast of 2.8 amid disappointing incoming data from the first quarter and harsh winter weather. This did not put a damper on Freddie Mac's overall forecast for housing, however. In fact, the title of the report, "Great Expectations," indicated that analysts at Freddie Mac still believe 2015 will be the best year for housing since the pre-recession days.

An early look at the realtor.com national monthly housing data, which is based on the first three weeks of March, showed that housing demand is surging and median list prices are rising faster.

When figuring in distressed sales (short sales and REO transactions), home prices jumped by 5.6 percent year-over-year in February, according to CoreLogic's February 2015 Home Price Index released on Tuesday.

The March employment summary released last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed only 126,000 jobs added for the month, which was less than half of the monthly average (266,000) for the 12 previous months, may have played a role in the lack of growth in consumer optimism. That same BLS March employment summary reported an average wage gain of just 2.1 percent year-over-year up to $24.86 per hour.

"We have less than one basis point, 0.73 complaints per loan in Q1 of 2013 and while we did see a slight rise through Q4 2014 it’s really insignificant," said Dori Daganhardt, VP of Product Marketing, Data, and Analytics Division with Black Knight, and the author of the white paper. "It doesn’t suggest that we get an A plus as an industry on managing the complaints related to performing loans, but I think it does suggest that there is more discovery that can be done.

The total number of bankruptcy filings year-to-date for the first three months of 2015 is 205,703, compared to 231,839 for the first three months of 2014. The average number of filings per month for the first three months of 2015 is 68,258, down from 2014's monthly average of 75,840. The state with the most cumulative filings year-to-date is California with 20,984, followed by Illinois at 15,031. Florida was a close third at 14,361.

After months of solid gains with the administration touting that the labor market is at its healthiest level since the turn of the century, payroll employment increases for March fell well short of expectations with just 126,000 jobs added, according to data released the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday.

Now, in a report to be released today titled "Analysis and Study of CFPB Consumer Complaint Data Related to Mortgage Servicing Activities,” Black Knight Financial Services (BKFS) and the Five Star Institute (FSI) seek to provide context and insight to complaints received by the CFPB by comparing the CFPB's two predominant mortgage complaint categories, servicing and default, with loan trends.

In its first-ever analysis of the U.S. housing market released Thursday, Nationwide Economics indicated that the national market was at its healthiest level in 14 years.

While consumers remained positive toward homebuying conditions in the latest survey, the reason for the positive outlook has shifted – prospective homebuyers are now dependent on low mortgage rates as opposed to low home prices. In Q1 2015 surveys, the percentage of consumers citing low home prices was at its lowest level since 2006, while the percentage of consumers who cited low mortgage rates was at a 10-year high.