Mortgage rates

North Texas home sales started 2020 with a bang, surging 21% in January from a year earlier.

As the hunt for yield intensifies, investors including Pacific Investment Management Co. see an attractive opportunity in mortgage bonds.

Freddie Mac saw a decline in net profit in 2019 due to decreased interest rate income, lower amortization revenue and risk-reducing investment costs, but its consecutive-quarter results improved.

Mortgage rates ticked up slightly, marking the first increase in four weeks, but they remain at levels which encourage borrowers to refinance, according to Freddie Mac.

While boosting origination volume for lenders and providing financial benefits for borrowers, the refinance boom could have adverse effects down the road, according to TransUnion.

Buyers are rushing into the housing market to take advantage of falling borrowing costs. Now, they're facing rising prices.

Refinance application activity last week was the highest in nearly seven years, with more than triple the volume from one year ago, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Banks' lowering of origination fees and loosening of underwriting standards often foreshadow a downturn.

Oahu's housing market started a new year on all major positive notes, according to new data that showed median prices and sale volumes rose in January after some weakness last year.

Despite a drop in multifamily loan volume, industrial, health care, office and retail originations pushed overall multifamily and commercial mortgage lending to unprecedented heights, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Consumer sentiment about purchasing a home nears its record high as almost half of those surveyed said mortgage rates will stay at the current low levels, according to Fannie Mae.

A larger percentage of newly originated mortgages to millennials shifted toward purchase loans as interest rates stayed low, according to Ellie Mae.

While loan officers will remain mortgage lenders' leading business development tool in the future, those originators believe business will come from a more diversified source pool, a Fannie Mae survey found.

Mortgage rates continued their slide this week, which along with positive economic news should continue to pump up purchase demand, according to Freddie Mac.

Mortgage application volume increased 5%, led by refinancings, as interest rates continued to fall on fears that the coronavirus was spreading in China and elsewhere, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

While down from the year before, December's housing value appreciation kept churning and should climb in 2020 to a new all-time high, according to CoreLogic.

With steady home price appreciation and falling interest rates, by some measures the shares of distressed mortgages existing in the market shrunk to record lows, according to Black Knight.

Home prices were up 3.9% annually in the San Diego metropolitan area in November, outpacing all other West Coast markets, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices reported.

The mortgage securitization market can expect some changes, particularly in the specified pool and to-be-announced markets, alongside a continuation of trends in other areas.

The U.S. homeownership rate rose to a six-year high in the fourth quarter, led by gains among young people and low-income Americans.