As stated last month: As we economists say, “forecasting is difficult, especially the future.” Fortunately, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the MBA update their quarterly and annual forecasts monthly for residential lending volumes – both refinance and purchase transactions. The forecasts typically span a three-year period, currently from 2016 to 2018. The lagging year (2016 …Read more
Congress has encouraged homeownership by allowing the deduction of home mortgage interest payments and property taxes on primary and second homes owned by individuals. For full details on home mortgage interest deductibility as it currently stands, read the IRS publication with all of the particulars at https://www.irs.gov/publications/p936/ar02.html Naturally to qualify for a deduction, the minimums …Read more
As we economists say, “forecasting is difficult, especially the future.” Fortunately, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the MBA update their quarterly and annual forecasts monthly for residential lending volumes – both refinance and purchase transactions. The forecasts typically span a three-year period, currently from 2016 to 2018. The lagging year (2016 at this time) often …Read more
One of the largest decisions anyone makes is whether to purchase or rent a home. The answer is not always straight forward. Many factors are required to reach a financial solution: home price, rent, income tax rate, interest rate, property tax, duration of rent or ownership, other tax deductions that can be itemized, insurance, homeowner …Read more
If you read the glowing headlines regarding November 2016 existing home sales, euphoria is a likely descriptor of the results. On the surface, the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) reports that sales were up a massive 15.4 percent when compared to a year ago on a seasonally adjusted annualized rate (SAAR). Now for the Rest …Read more
Had the opportunity to participate in a panel on industrial real estate this month at a national commercial conference. I was taken aback by a broker and fellow panel member that truly believed that rising interest rates would not result in a corresponding increase in capitalization rates. The panelist’s denial of a likely increase in …Read more
Interest rates continue to escalate post-election, with the 30-year fixed-rate conventional mortgage hitting 4.03 percent in week ending November 23, 2016 – the first time above 4.0 percent this year and also the highest rate recorded thus far in 2016. The last time that 30-year rates traded at this or a greater level was July …Read more
One week following the U.S. Presidential election, 30-year conventional fixed-rate residential loans rocketed up 37 basis points from 3.57 percent to 3.94 percent as investors commenced dumping their low-yielding Treasuries in anticipation of rising rates due to a stronger economy. Mortgage rate data are from Freddie Mac’s weekly Primary Mortgage Market Survey http://www.freddiemac.com/pmms/archive.html?year=2016. The 37 …Read more
For those of you that do not Tweet – you should consider doing so. If you want to talk about effective bang for the buck, the 140 total characters, letters, numbers and spaces of a Tweet on Twitter certainly qualifies. Who knew you could say so much in so little? More important perhaps, is that …Read more
When it comes to homeownership, one size does not fit all. There are markets that have comparably higher rents that favor homeownership. Some markets are highly expensive to own a home versus renting. There are other markets that are both expensive in which to own or rent. Homeownership is not the best decision for all. …Read more