Featured

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae release their first quarter earnings, and senior citizens are retiring with an alarming amount of mortgage debt--coming up on this weekend’s News Wrap.

Releasing their earnings reports simultaneously, Fannie and Freddie reported first-quarter profits of $5.3 billion and $4.0 billion, respectively—a major step back from incomes reported last year but still a fair amount for what was a slow period for the housing market. Both enterprises have reported profits each quarter for more than two years straight.

While the homeownership rate among Americans age 65 and older has remained at a constant 80 percent for the past decade, the percent of older Americans with outstanding mortgage debt has increased since the start of the housing crisis, according to a report released Wednesday by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

With concerns about employment easing, Americans are increasingly optimistic about the housing market, reports Fannie Mae in its April National Housing Survey. And, according to the mortgage buyer, this climbing optimism may foreshadow an upswing in housing activity through the summer months.

A top official for the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is looking at a felony charge for allegedly threatening the agency's former acting director, Edward DeMarco. Richard Hornsby, FHFA's COO, was charged in late April with "[threatening] to kidnap or injure a person," resulting in an order for him to stay away from DeMarco.

In a survey of more than 2,000 adults, Trulia found an estimated 41 percent “would strongly or somewhat prefer” to buy a new single-family home over an existing one, assuming the prices were equal. Just more than one in five respondents—21 percent—said they would prefer an existing home, while 38 percent expressed no preference.

Despite a lackluster Spring that went against analyst's projections, CoreLogic's Home Price Index reported that home prices, including distressed and non-distressed sales, still rose from February to March by 1.4 percent. Without distressed sales, the HPI still reflected positive gains for the month, up 0.9 percent month-over-month.

After years of too-loose and then too-tight credit access, average FICO scores are now slowly floating down, and the market looks a little more open for low-score borrowers. But do these steady declines really indicate a loosening in standards among lenders? “Afraid not,” say researchers at the Urban Institute’s (UI) Housing Finance Policy Center.

Fannie Mae's book of business declined for the first three months of this year, ending the first quarter with a monthly compound annualized rate of -1.8 percent. Over the first quarter, the GSE's book of business declined at a compound annualized rate of 2.2 percent.

In Black Knight Financial Services’ latest Mortgage Monitor Report, the company found that only one in ten Americans are underwater, down from one in three in 2010. Overall, the company's look at March data reflected a shifting landscape.