Economy

Higher rates and lower consumer confidence are expected to put a damper on existing home sales in 2017, according to the National Association of Realtors.

The mortgage interest deduction has been a pillar of U.S. housing policy for more than a century, but Congress appears ready to consider significant changes to it that some industry players worry could effectively render it moot.

The inventory of starter homes is shrinking at an increasingly faster pace, leaving first-time homebuyers with fewer and more expensive options, according to Trulia.

Interest rates may climb to 3% on 10-year Treasuries by next year as deficits and inflation rise under a Donald Trump presidency and that would hurt the housing market, said Jeffrey Gundlach, chief investment officer of DoubleLine Capital.

Southern National Bancorp of Virginia in McLean has agreed to buy Eastern Virginia Bankshares in Glen Allen.

It is going take some time before it comes to fruition, but the Federal Housing Finance Agency got the ball rolling Tuesday on pushing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to begin purchasing manufactured housing loans.

Stanford Kurland will step down from his role as CEO of PennyMac Financial Services and its affiliate PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust and assume the role of executive chairman of both as part of a broader executive reorganization.

One step the government can take to strengthening housing is to create a unified office dedicated to housing finance and policy, streamlining and making more efficient existing agencies and programs.

Millennials are the most optimistic about the state of the U.S. real estate market, while most American express favorable opinions about housing, according to Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency finalized a rule Tuesday that will create a "duty to serve" for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to help low- and moderate- income consumers, including encouraging a secondary market for manufactured housing loans.

The national foreclosure inventory decreased by nearly a third in October from a year earlier, CoreLogic reported.

When Donald Trump announced his choice for Treasury secretary last month, he called Steven Mnuchin a "world-class financier," citing business successes like his profitable turnaround of a California bank.

SoFi Lending Corp.'s securitization of its student loan refis for high net worth individuals is now a model for its recent expansion into super prime jumbo mortgages.

Many consumers without traditional credit scores have nearly identical risk profiles to those who can be assessed the conventional way, representing an untapped market, according to a report by VantageScore.

Rising mortgage interest rates affect the volume of refinance and purchase originations, but don't necessarily spell bad news for home prices, explains Fannie Mae Chief Economist Doug Duncan.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will again halt evictions nationwide for foreclosed properties during the holiday season.

Fairway Independent Mortgage Corp. is rolling out a new mobile application that allows consumers to apply for a loan, scan documents and get updates on their loan status through real-time push notifications.

Canadian household confidence rose, boosted by improving sentiment about the national housing market, weekly telephone polling shows.

A group of traders in JPMorgan's investment bank has expanded from selling commercial mortgage-backed securities to underwriting loans that are unsuitable for bonds, such as those for big construction projects.

Manufactured housing advocates are "guardedly optimistic" that the Federal Housing Finance Agency will soon issue a long-awaited final rule that they hope will expand the secondary market for mobile homes.