News

Mortgage rates seem to be hitting new record lows on a weekly basis. And this week wasn't any exception, as reports released Thursday by Freddie Mac and Bankrate showed yet another decline in rates for the week ending August 4, 2010. According to Freddie Mac, 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 4.49 percent, and 15-year fixed-rate mortgages fell to a record low of 3.95 percent. Bankrate reported the same trend of ever-declining rates. The tracking company said 30-year fixed-rate mortgages came in at 4.66 percent, and 15-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 4.11 percent.

The nation's two largest mortgage companies have published forecasts lowering their projections for home sales and mortgage production, industry-wide. The economists at Fannie Mae are tempering public expectations for the housing market with a candid warning: the headwinds in housing have picked up. Freddie Mac's economic team slimmed down its projected numbers, but said the market has gained enough momentum to carry through the occasional setbacks.

The volume of commercial real estate assets with outstanding distress grew by $6.3 billion in June, but it was the smallest monthly increase since late 2008, according to the research firm Real Capital Analytics. While the slow-down in the growth rate can be attributed in part to the lack of large portfolios to fall into trouble during the month, the analysts at Real Capital say they are also seeing a marked increase in workout activity by lenders.

Sales of Miami and surrounding area homes increased sharply in June, according to MDA DataQuick. During the month, 9,296 new and resale houses and condos closed escrow in the Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Broward counties, up 18.3 percent from May and more than 20 percent higher than a year ago.

Joseph A. Jiampietro, senior adviser to FDIC chairman Sheila C. Bair will leave the FDIC on August 13. Jiampietro has served as the senior adviser since March 2009, before that working as managing director of the financial institutions group at J.P. Morgan.

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has received congressional approval to raise borrowers' annual premiums for single-family mortgage insurance. House Resolution 5891 passed the Senate late Wednesday, after clearing the House last Friday. It now heads to the president for final sign-off. The bill allows FHA to increase the statutory cap of the annual fee charged for federal mortgage insurance three-fold, from 0.55 percent to 1.55 percent, but FHA Commissioner David Stevens has indicated that he may not need to raise premiums to the maximum.

Christopher Kuehl was recently named SVP of mortgage investments at Bethesda, Maryland-based American Capital Agency Management, LLC, the external manager of American Capital Agency Corp. (AGNC), a REIT that invests in agency pass-through securities and collateralized mortgage obligations for which the principal and interest payments are guaranteed by a U.S. government agency. Kuehl joined American Capital from Freddie Mac, where he most recently served as VP, head of agency and nonagency mortgage investments.

The analytics firm CoreLogic has renewed and expanded its longstanding data licensing agreement with the Houston Association of Realtors (HAR). According to CoreLogic, the agreement extends the permitted use of HAR's listing data beyond automated valuation models (AVMs) to other risk management solutions.

The nation's REO stock fell 0.6 percent in May to 524,000 properties, according to Barclays Capital. In addition, the research firm estimates that housing's shadow inventory - which Barclays defines as the supply of homes nearing REO status - declined by 2.3 percent to 4.02 million properties. A separate study released by Clear Capital supports the assumption that indeed, there are fewer REOs influencing the market. The company says the percentage of bank-owned homes sold as compared to all properties sold dropped 22.7 percent during the May-July period.

Fannie Mae has issued a media bulletin with details of a property auction in South Florida, a market that continues to struggle with high numbers of home repossessions and a backlog of foreclosure cases. The nation's largest mortgage company will auction off 100 Fannie Mae-owned REOs in Florida's Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties on August 14th.