Economy in a Nutshell

CoreLogic recently released its MarketPulse Report for the month of August, which explores some interesting economic trends associated with the mortgage finance industry.

The first article, entitled “U.S. Economic Outlook: August 2017,” and written by Chief Economist of CoreLogic Dr. Frank Nothaft—who DS News spoke with in July—examines the effect that nonresident foreign buyers have on housing markets in “gateway cities” and the actions some metros are taking to curb those effects. Nothaft writes, “These buyers are often high-wealth and may add to speculative pressures, especially for expensive homes. Further, these buyers may effectively restrict supply if they leave their homes vacant.”

Further, Andrew LePage, Research Analyst and CoreLogic, examines the ways in which rising interest rates decrease home affordability in complicated ways—more so than rising home prices. “The change in the typical mortgage payment of the past year illustrates how it can be misleading to simply focus on the rise in home prices when assessing affordability,” he writes. In his study, he uses what CoreLogic calls a “typical mortgage rate,” which is an interest rate-adjusted monthly payment that uses the median U.S. sale price to calculate affordability.

Archana Pradhan, Economist at CoreLogic, takes a look at how jumbo loans have become cheaper for borrowers when compared to more traditional conforming loans, and how that’s changed since 2013.

Finally, Bret Fortenberry, Senior Professional of Science and Analytics, asks what the geographic influencers are for mortgage fraud risk, and finds two states where CoreLogic pinpoints being the strongest influencers of fraud. He breaks it down even further: “Finding the states that are correlated is good, but looking at smaller regions is better. Smaller regions have a reduced number of contributing fraud factors to analyze.

The MarketPulse Report also contains their Loan Performance Insights Report from May 2017, the Home Price Index Detail on a state level combined with distressed properties, the Home Price Index, and the CoreLogic HPI Market Condition Overview for June 2017 and the forecast for June 2022.

You can read the full report in its detail here.