Market Studies

In the third estimate for the nation's fourth-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) growth recently released, housing retained a 15.25 percent share of the 2.2 percent GDP growth, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

"This is a positive sign heading into the spring homebuying season," Freddie Mac wrote on its blog. "This also shows positive momentum in general for the housing market, since this is the fourth consecutive month pending home sales have been up."

The percentage of seriously delinquent mortgage loans, which are those 60 days or more past due or held by borrowers in bankruptcy whose payments are 30 days or more past due, was 3.1 percent in Q4 – a decline of 0.9 percent from the previous quarter and 12.2 percent year-over-year, according to the OCC.

In the real earnings report for February 2015, the BLS reported that real average hourly earnings – hourly earnings adjusted for inflation – increased by 22 cents year-over-year from $10.32 to $10.54 year-over-year, an increase of 2.1 percent, despite a drop by one cent from January's average of $10.55.

Just as it reported for December's national index, Freddie Mac reported that January's national MiMi value of 74.6 indicated a weak housing market and even declined slightly (0.20 percent) month-over-month despite a year-over-year increase of 3.39 percent

March's Real Estate Nowcast predicted that existing home sales for March would fall between 4.83 and 5.12 million on a seasonally adjusted annualized basis. The target number for existing home sales of 4.97 million is an increase of 1.9 percent month-over-month and 5.8 percent from March 2014.

The temporary factors that slowed economic growth include a drawdown in inventory, unusually high snowfall in some parts of the country, and the West Coast port slowdown. Fannie Mae expects the reducing of those factors in the second quarter combined with upbeat labor market conditions and positive consumer and business fundamentals to push GDP growth to 2.8 percent in 2015, ahead of 2014's pace of 2.4 percent.

Despite the fact that 89 percent of the mortgage industry professional surveyed by the Collingwood Group last September said regulations were hurting their business, 76 percent of respondents in March's Mortgage Industry Outlook Report said they would be willing to pay up to 25 basis points when asked how much they would pay "to be relieved of all liability for future buybacks, indemnifications and/or lawsuits."

According to February's first mortgage default index, the rate ticked downward to 1.00 percent in February from 1.02 percent in January after seven months of increases since falling to its lowest level of 0.88 in July 2014. February's first mortgage default rate represents a decline of 23 basis points from February 2014 (1.23 percent). The rate recently experienced its largest increase in the previous 15 months (five basis points) from November to December 2014.

In its February 2015 Real Estate Investor Activity Report, Auction.com reported that overall, 56 percent of investors preferred flipping compared to 42.8 percent who preferred renting. The percentage of investors surveyed in February who preferred flipping was 6 percentage points higher than in Q4 2014.