Market Studies

Most renters are putting about 30 percent of their monthly income toward their rental payment, which makes saving for a 10 or 20 percent down payment difficult. This conflict forces first-time buyers and millennials to pursue other options when looking to purchase a home, such as help from family or friends.

In a market where house prices are low and income growth is strong, such as Columbia, South Carolina (another market in the eastern U.S.), the payments begin the life of the mortgage as 17 percent of the household’s monthly income; by the end of the life of the loan, the payments drop to 6.6 percent

The data, which examined 55 of the largest metro areas across the country to determine the best markets for single-family home investors looking at median price, average gross rental yields, year-over-year job growth, and home affordability, showed that the top investment market is Charlotte, North Carolina due to its strong job growth.

The authors noted that the typical scenario for economic downturns is for the number of problem loans to rise, along with loan-loss provisions. During the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, commonly known as the Great Recession, net charge-offs totaled more than $50 billion, a historically high level. Meanwhile, the provisions for loan and lease losses more than tripled from 2007 to 2008 at the onset of the recession—from less than $20 billion to more than $70 billion in just a year.

“As disappointing as last month’s jobs report was, this one more than makes up for it,” said Curt Long, Chief Economist of the National Associations of Federal Credit Unions (NAFCU). “Job gains surged past analysts’ expectations, while the unemployment rate dropped even as 300,000 workers joined the labor force. Meanwhile, year-over-year wage growth hit its highest mark since mid-2009. Barring catastrophe, everything looks set for the Fed to raise rates in December.”

Despite rising shares of homebuyers age 50 and over and shrinking percentages of homeowners ages 35 to 50 and under 30, the median age of homebuyers has remained “remarkably steady” in the last decade.

Although agency mortgage-backed securities liquidity has declined recently, it remains mostly where it was prior to the housing bubble; the current levels of agency MBS liquidity are likely to be in place for a while, since the factors driving the decline are unlikely to slow down in the foreseeable future.

October 2015 marks the two-year anniversary since the first SFR securitization, IH 2013-SFR1 (Invitation Homes), in October 2013. Since then, total issuance for 25 single-family securitizations in two years have amounted to $13.08 billion backed by loans on nearly 100,000 homes, according to Morningstar.

However, the decline in GDP growth coincides with a drop in a couple of key housing indicators for September. Thursday’s announcement of 1.5 GDP growth came the same day as the National Association of Realtors' pending home sales index for September, which was reported to be at its lowest level in eight months.

Largely due to a combination of increasing home prices and a lack of suitable inventory, flipping edged out renting as the preferred strategy in Q3 2015 for the fourth consecutive quarter, since Auction.com began tracking investor intent data. Overall in Q3, 53.7 percent of investors said they preferred flipping, while 45.1 percent said they intended to rent the properties they purchased.