Getting a home improvement project to pay off is notoriously tricky. There's no guarantee you'll recoup the money you pour into a bathroom remodel or an outdoor kitchen. Plus, the COVID-19 pandemic

Dated: September 22 2015
Views: 533
The riskiness of first-time buyer agency mortgages stood at 15.55% in August, part of a continuing trend, according to the American Enterprise Institute’s International Center on Housing Risk.
The risk index for first-time buyers was up 1.3 percentage points from August 2014. The Agency FBMRI is nearly 6 percentage points higher than the mortgage risk index for repeat homebuyers, and the gap has been widening.
First-time buyers accounted for 56.9% of primary owner-occupied home purchase mortgages with a government guarantee, up from 54.5% the prior August.
The Combined FBMSI (which measures the share of first-time buyers for both government-guaranteed and private-sector mortgages) stood at an estimated 51.4%, up from 49.3% the prior August.
“The strong spring 2015 home buying season has been paced by outsized gains for first-time buyers,” says Center Co-Director Edward Pinto. “Unfortunately, these gains are fueled in part by liberalized credit standards, which is creating demand pressure and driving real home prices higher. This will lead to future instability.”
The number of primary owner-occupied purchase mortgages going to first-time buyers in August totaled an estimated 156,000, up 20% from the 130,000 mortgages in August 2014.
Nearly 54% of first-time buyer loans were high risk (MRI above 12%) in August, up from 48.5% a year earlier.
Historically low mortgage rates, an improving labor market, and loose credit standards, combined with a 35-month-long seller’s market for existing homes, continue to drive up home prices faster than income.
The First-Time Buyer Mortgage Share and Mortgage Risk Indexes are key housing market indicators based on monthly data for nearly all government-guaranteed home purchase loans, which greatly reduces the risk of sample error. By relying on millions of loans, this approach stands in contrast to traditional first-time buyer surveys based on small samples of homebuyers or real estate agents.
For Mark Ross, founder of Ross NW Real Estate and professional real estate broker, real estate has always been the career of choice. During his 25+ years in the industry, Mark has gained experience in....
Getting a home improvement project to pay off is notoriously tricky. There's no guarantee you'll recoup the money you pour into a bathroom remodel or an outdoor kitchen. Plus, the COVID-19 pandemic
Single-family housing starts ended 2020 on a high note, rising 12% in December to a 1.338 million unit pace – the highest pace since 2006, according to the Census Bureau.That’s up 27.8% from one
Fannie Mae‘s latest forecast projects economic growth to hit 5.3% in 2021, an increase of 0.8 percentage points from what the government-sponsored enterprise projected last month.The forecasted
In December, AmTrust Title Insurance Company announced the hiring of seasoned underwriter Mary Shelley as its midwest region agency underwriter. We took the opportunity to talk to Shelley, who has