Market Studies

August marks the 18th consecutive month of rising home prices, according to FNC's Residential Price Index released Tuesday, indicating an indisputable recovery. However, FNC, a mortgage industry technology provider, is detecting some deceleration in the recovery and declares, ""It is clear that the recovery remains uneven across the nation.""

Are Americans so accustomed to the ineffectiveness and triviality of Congress that the threat of a third week with essentially no governing body barely registers a blip on consumers' confidence scale? The University of Michigan's Index of Consumer Sentiment was better than many analysts were expecting given the situation in Washington, dropping from 77.5 at the end of September to 75.2 at mid-October.

Fixed mortgage rates held more or less steady this week as Capitol Hill remained locked in debate over budgetary concerns. According to data in Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.23 percent for the week ending October 10, and the 15-year fixed rate came in at 3.31 percent.

The federal government shutdown is center stage in the news and the question that is repeatedly asked is: What impact will it have on the economy? Of course, the potential economic impact will be difficult to gauge because the shutdown has stopped the flow of government data releases until the funding battle is resolved. Luckily, one key indicator remains live.

FBR Capital Markets on Wednesday raised its projection for new mortgage volume in the third quarter to $400-$420 billion, largely due to more activity from special servicers as larger banks relinquish market share. FBR anticipates strong performance from these specialty servicers, partly because of their ability to effectually mine acquired portfolios for refinancing opportunities.

There were a total of 376,931 U.S. properties with foreclosure filings in the third quarter of 2013, RealtyTrac reported Thursday. The Q3 figure represents a 7 percent decline from the previous quarter and a 29 percent decline from the third quarter of 2012. By RealtyTrac's calculations, one in every 348 U.S. housing units had a foreclosure filing last quarter, which puts Q3 foreclosure activity at its lowest level since the second quarter of 2007.

Ten real estate investment trusts (REITs) have gone public this year, and six have outperformed the market, according to SNL Financial. Year-to-date as of October 3, the 10 REITs raised $3.4 billion through their initial public offerings. The group's best performer has been Aviv REIT with an 18.27 percent return year-to-date. Five other REIT IPOs have been announced for later this year, including a Blackstone spinoff and two prominent players in the REO-to-rental space.

Overall residential shadow inventory, as of July 2013, was 1.9 million homes, according to CoreLogic. That's the lowest shadow inventory tally reported since August 2008. The industry's current shadow inventory carries a value of $293 billion, down from $380 billion in July 2012. It represents 3.7 months' of supply and accounts for 85 percent of the 2.2 million properties that were seriously delinquent, in foreclosure, or bank-owned at July month-end.

The number of homeowners eligible for refinancing has shrunk from about 10 million in December 2012 to about 5.7 million as of August, according to Lender Processing Services' (LPS) latest Mortgage Monitor report. LPS cites heightened refinance activity over the past few years and rising interest rates as reasons for the decline and sees a market ripe for home equity lines of credit as a result of rising prices.

Investment bank FBR Capital Markets released its preview of third-quarter earnings for major U.S. banks Monday, with a cloudy outlook for mortgage banking. In general, bank stocks have underperformed the broader market by about 2 percent over the third quarter; and zeroing in on the mortgage market, FBR is not optimistic about Q3 results.