Following in the steps of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac has eliminated a major restriction to borrowers seeking to refinance with existing servicers. Beginning yesterday, borrowers now have no credit score requirement for refinancing, as long as they have at

Richard Cordray, the former Attorney General of Ohio, was officially sworn in as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a long-awaited appointment that had been stalled by Congressional stonewalling. The question for real estate professionals, though, is

April 1 is the set date for when the new Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guarantee fees will rise by 10 basis points as the primary funding method for the government’s recently-passed payroll tax cut extension, and Lenders One,

On December 21, as the year winded down and everyone began anticipating the holidays, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) quietly released a 14 percent downward revision to its existing-home sales, reversing data going back to 2007. Though the

REO inventories, and the supposed plan on what to do with them, have attained a near-mythical status in recent months. Every month or so, we publish a story on recommendations from the National Association of Realtors, local attempts to

News flash: homebuyers care about the perceived quality of a property. Though hardly news to agents, the 2011 National Association of Realtors Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, just released in November, found that 67 percent of homebuyers decided

Down payments can make or break a housing contract, and recent data from LendingTree, which reports that the average down payment on homes is just 12 percent, would appear to be welcome news. After all, high down payments and

Everyone has a hypothesis on what specific factor is prohibiting housing from a true, sustainable recovery. Typically, such hypotheses feature a stock list of usual suspects – excess inventory, REOs and foreclosures, vacant properties, unreasonably tight financing and contract failures. An academic

Construction spending in November exceeded economists’ predictions and rose 1.2 percent from October to $807.1 billion, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce. All in all, construction spending was positive across the

Numerous disagreements swirled around Congress’ passing last month of the payroll tax cut extension, but none proved more controversial with real estate professionals than the agreed funding method for the tax cut – and now a date has been

After a strong summer, home values have been charting a rough course in recent months. Between CoreLogic’s HPI, LPS’ home price index and Radar Logic’s RPX, home values in the most recent data sets declined between 1 and 2

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has renewed a waiver for an anti-flipping regulation through 2012, according to a press release just issued by the agency. Originally passed to limit home flipping – the housing strategy of buying cheap properties

The National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) Pending Home Sales Index, a measure of housing contracts for pending sales, rose 7.3 percent in November to its highest level in 19 months, according to a new press release from the association.

Standard & Poor’s released the latest results of its influential Case-Shiller Home Price Indices just moments ago for the month of October, and like the previous collection of data, it shows both monthly and year-over-year declines for housing values

Standard & Poor’s will release the latest batch of Case-Shiller Home Price Indices next Tuesday, and several of the other competing price indices have some analysts projecting the second negative month in a row for the Case-Shiller, which remains

Affordability is a main feature of today’s market, as depressed prices have produced one of the most accommodating buyer’s markets in recent