Tag Archives: Credit Availability

A gauge of leading economic indicators in the United States showed solid growth in September, suggesting moderate economic expansion to finish out the year.

The company responsible for one of the most widely used measures of credit health is making changes to its current model that could boost credit scores nationwide.

The ability-to-repay and qualified mortgage (QM) rules that went into effect earlier this year are not having a significant impact on approvals of prime conforming residential mortgage loans, but they are impacting the jumbo and nontraditional loan markets, according to the July 2014 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices conducted by the Federal Reserve.

Ellie Mae released its Origination Insight Report for May, analyzing data from over 3.5 million loan applications that ran through Ellie Mae’s Encompass mortgage management solution. The company found that refinances declined slightly for the month to 33 percent of all loans, down from 37 percent in the previous month.

The National Housing Report from RE/MAX found that for the third month in a row, home sales in May rose higher than sales in the previous month. May sales were 11.5 percent higher than in April, but stubbornly remained below the same period last year by 9.9 percent.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released its latest Survey of Consumer Expectations for June 2014. The survey found that consumer's expect home prices to increase in every region except one—the South—where a slight decrease is expected.

Recently, Dave Stevens, head of the Mortgage Bankers Association, revealed a shocking statistic—the GSEs denied 56 percent of African American mortgage applicants. Many, including Fannie Mae, responded that the MBA's numbers overestimated the denial rate for minorities. A new blog post from the Urban Institute commented that the MBA’s denial rate wasn't too high; rather, it was much too low.

A report released by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) showed that mortgage credit availability was down slightly in April, which means a tightening of standards in the mortgage industry. The results showed that the Mortgage Credit Availability Index decreased by 0.18 percent to 113.8 from March to April. Credit availability is, however, still above the index benchmark of 100, which was set in March of 2012.

According to a report released by LendingTree, down payment percentages for 30-year fixed-rate purchase loans fell in the first quarter to an average of 15.78 percent, down from just higher than 16 percent in the last quarter of 2013. At the same time, the company found average credit scores for borrowers matched with lenders on its own network have dropped 6 percent year-over-year, opening up the credit pool a little more.

A study by the Urban Institute calls for "expanding the credit box" in order to promote not only a housing recovery, but an overall economic recovery. The report estimated, "1.22 million fewer purchase mortgages were made in 2012 than would have been the case had credit availability remained at 2001 levels."