Silicon Valley Bank resumed mortgage originations on Tuesday via its newly established “bridge bank” — just four days after California state regulators took possession of the financial institution and appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Company (FDIC) as receivers. 

“We are still open for business and my team is still working together moving the mortgage loans through our pipeline,” Suzie Porter, director of mortgage operations at SVB, said in a social media post on Tuesday.

On Friday, the 40-year-old commercial bank focused on the tech community SVB collapsed amid a deposit run that provoked a liquidity crisis, which triggered the regulators’ interference. 

Over the weekend, the FDIC transferred all deposits and assets of the former SVB to a “bridge bank” called Silicon Valley Bridge Bank, N.A. The new entity stated that depositors have full access to their money and that new and existing deposits are protected.  

On Tuesday, its newly appointed CEO, Tim Mayopoulos, said in a statement Silicon Valley Bridge Bank, N.A. was open for business. “We are making new loans and fully honoring existing credit facilities.” 

Mayopoulos, a former Fannie Mae CEO and Blend president, is a veteran of crisis management and mortgage. He joined Fannie Mae in the wake of the financial crisis in 2008-2009 and served as CEO from 2012 to 2018.

Mayopoulos resigned to join mortgage software startup Blend in 2019. In January, he announced he was stepping down from his role as president of Blend, which has struggled financially. 

Mayopoulos, an FDIC systemic resolution advisory committee member for over two years, will lead SVB, an institution with $209 billion in assets. 

SVB operated as a portfolio lender in the residential mortgage space, not selling loans on the secondary market. This structure allows the bank to offer clients “common sense underwriting and provide more nimble prequalifications, approvals and closings,” the bank said on its website. 

SVB focuses on jumbo loans (greater than $726,200), which have lower rates, for primary and secondary homes. Mortgage News Daily showed the average 30-year jumbo mortgage rates at 6.15% on Wednesday afternoon, compared to 6.55% for conventional loans. 

SVB’s mortgage origination volume reached $2.4 billion in 12 months, through 30 active loan officers and 20 branches, according to mortgage tech platform Modex. In total, 76.6% of the production was conventional loans and 49% consisted of purchase loans. The company’s average mortgage loan was about $1.45 million, and the vast majority of its origination volume is in California. 

One of Mayopoulos’ first missions is to restore customers’ confidence in SVB after the turbulence over the last few days. The bank’s former executive team failed to sell its assets to ensure customers’ withdrawals. They took a $1.8 billion loss from selling a $21 billion portfolio of available-for-sale securities that triggered massive deposit outflows.  

SVB had a securities-investment portfolio of $120.1 billion as of Dec. 31, 2022, including more than $16 billion in Treasury securities and some $64 billion in agency-issued mortgage-backed securities, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Much of that MBS portfolio involved lower mortgage rates and was marked as being “held to maturity.”  

SVB specializes in banking for tech startups, financing almost half of U.S. venture-backed technology and healthcare companies. 

“The number one thing you can do to support the future of this institution is to help us rebuild our deposit base, both by leaving deposits with Silicon Valley Bridge Bank and transferring back deposits that left over the last several days,” Mayopoulos said in a statement. 



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The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on Wednesday announced a sweeping overhaul of the agency’s disaster recovery efforts to improve the response for communities impacted by climate change.

HUD has played an expanded role in the response to natural disasters in recent years. As such, the Department is establishing two new offices: the Office of Disaster Management (ODM) in the Office of the Deputy Secretary and the Office of Disaster Recovery (ODR) within the Office of Community Planning and Development.

This includes “dozens” of additional staff to help expedite the establishment of the offices — and an investment of $3.4 billion in Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds.

“The allocated funds will help communities in Alaska, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Puerto Rico recover from disasters and build resilience from climate effects, with a specific focus on low- and moderate-income populations,” HUD said in an announcement about the move. “The funds are specified to be used for disaster relief, long-term recovery, restoration of infrastructure and housing, economic revitalization, and mitigation, in the most impacted and distressed areas.”

These efforts are expected to help HUD streamline collaboration efforts and better meet its goals, the Department said.

“These steps will streamline the agency’s disaster recovery and resilience work by increasing coordination, reducing bureaucracy, and increasing capacity to get recovery funding to communities more quickly by facilitating collaborative, transparent disaster recovery planning with communities earlier in the process,” HUD said.

These efforts were announced on Wednesday during events by Department leaders. HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge spoke of these new efforts during a visit to Jackson, Kentucky, a state that recently received about $300 million in recovery funds.

Deputy HUD Secretary Adrianne Todman also spoke of the moves in Ft. Myers, Florida, a state where communities are receiving $2.7 billion in funds for a number of disasters that have recently occurred.

“HUD is committed to helping underserved communities in hard-hit areas recover from  disasters,” said Fudge. “We know that far too often, not-so-privileged households bear the brunt of climate-related disasters. We will ensure they have access to the resources they need to rebuild and recover equitably. Today’s announcement sends  a strong message: equity is elemental to the disaster recovery work of HUD and the Biden-Harris Administration.”

These initiatives follow a December 2022 request for information by HUD, in which the Department asked for ways to simplify, modernize, and more equitably distribute disaster recovery funds in the form of CDBG grants related to disaster recovery (CDBG-DR) and mitigation (CDBG-MIT). 

“Over the last two decades, an increasing number of major disasters have impacted the nation and highlighted the importance of effective disaster management at the Federal, State and Local levels of government,” HUD said. “HUD plays an outsized role in preparing relocations of populations, addressing disaster-related housing needs, supporting [the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)] with evacuation, sheltering HUD-assisted residents, developing interim housing solutions, and leading planning and supporting  long-term, sustainable community recovery.”

These efforts fall under a Climate Action Plan released by HUD in October of 2021 — a plan put into motion through an executive order during the first week of President Joe Biden’s term in office.

Last year, HUD announced that homeowners with Federal Housing Administration-insured mortgage financing will now be allowed to obtain private flood insurance policies. This was done in an effort to expand consumer options and protect borrowers from the leading type of natural disaster nationwide.

In addition, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) and three Republican colleagues recently reintroduced a bill designed to permit policyholders under the National Flood Insurance Program to have prior premium rates remain in effect until the FEMA administrator satisfies certain conditions. A prior version was introduced last year but failed to progress.



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The Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank failures that occurred over the last week have caused even more uncertainty within the mortgage industry. Still, homebuyers took advantage of declining rates provoked by the turbulence and applied for home loans. Meanwhile, mortgage lenders are still trying to calm down their investors and business partners. 

The recent crisis impacted homebuyers in different ways. A potential pause on the Federal Reserve’s federal funds rate hikes may bring borrowers on the sidelines back to the market, as mortgage rates could fall even further. However, the turbulence can harm consumer confidence to commit to new home loans. 

“Consumer confidence is always a very necessary part of buying a house, and certainly reading the news about potential lack of access to deposits that customers have with these two banks, people may worry about that,” James Deitch, founder of Teraverde Management Advisors LLC, said. “But I’m not sure the consumer will hold off on purchasing a house simply because of the turbulence they may see in Silicon Valley and Signature.” 

The latest Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) survey proved Deitch right. The data shows that the mortgage composite index, a mortgage loan application volume measure, increased 6.5% for the week ending Jan. 10 compared to the prior week. The refinance index increased 5% in the same period, and the seasonally adjusted purchase index rose 7%.

The survey, conducted weekly since 1990, covers 75% of all U.S. retail residential mortgage applications. 

“Treasury yields declined late last week, as market concerns over bank closures and the potential for broader ripple effects triggered a flight to safety in Treasury bonds,” Joel Kan, MBA’s vice president and deputy chief economist, said in a statement. “While lower rates should buoy housing demand, the financial market volatility may cause buyers to pause their decisions.” 

The MBA survey shows that the average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($726,200 or less) was 6.71% last week, down from the previous week’s 6.79%. Rates for jumbo loan balances (greater than $726,200) went from 6.49% to 6.39% in the same period. 

Silicon Valley Bank collapsed last week after it lacked the liquidity to pay for clients’ withdrawals. It was the biggest bank failure since Washington Mutual collapsed in 2008. The SVB failure was followed by Signature Bank, which closed its doors on Sunday. Citing systemic risks, regulators approved depositors’ access to all their money and additional funding for banks on Sunday. 

“The Treasury did make the correct decision to stabilize the market by ensuring that depositors had access to their funds. Depositors did nothing wrong; they should have access to their funds. That was a favorable development,” Deitch said. 

Calming the market 

With many storm clouds on the horizon, the two top U.S. lenders, Rocket Companies and United Wholesale Mortgage, announced that they don’t hold cash deposits or securities at Silicon Valley and Signature and have no business relationship or direct exposure to the banks. 

Regarding its funding capacity, Rocket said, “the Company’s warehouse line providers are all with large global money center banks or their affiliates,” according to an 8k filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). UWM added that 90% of the “company’s $9.3 billion warehouse line capacity is with large global money center banks or their affiliates.” 

Mr. Cooper also stated the company’s corporate uninsured cash accounts are held in money centers and global investment banks. Client funds are held in insured deposit accounts at a mix of money centers and regional banks, the company said. 

“Separately, the Company disclosed that over the course of the first quarter, it has increased the target hedge ratio on its MSR hedge position to 75% of the net duration risk in its MSR portfolio from 25% at year-end 2022, with the goal of mitigating the risk to capital and tangible book value in a declining interest rate environment,” the company said in a Form 8K filing. 

Mauro Guzzo, founder and executive chairman at brokerage firm Guzzo & Co, said he has not seen lenders further tightening lending conditions since last week. However, according to Guzzo, the banks’ crisis could change the market by potentially lowering interest rates. 

“But this is something which has not been announced just yet,” Guzzo said. “The Fed will need to make a difficult decision between continuing to fight inflation or instead bring down the rates to calm the market down.” 



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March came in like a lion for the banking industry with a trio of bank failures, including the nation’s 16th largest bank, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), with assets of $212 billion.

The other banks laid to rest in early March were crypto-friendly lenders Silvergate Capital Corp. ($11.4 billion in assets) and Signature Bank ($110 billion in assets). The bank failures set off panic in markets globally and prompted a flight to safe investments, like U.S. Treasuries, which has helped to fuel a recent precipitous decline in interest rates.

The impact of the failures is still being assessed by the markets. Experts who spoke with HousingWire about the banking-industry woes point out that it’s still too early to know how everything will shake out. For now, however, they say lenders in the adjacent mortgage banking market should take some prudent steps to guard against the worst of the downside risk — zeroing in on bank-sponsored warehouse lines utilized by independent mortgage banks (IMBs).

Among the commonalities for all three failed banks was a concentration of customers in a narrow industry segment — crypto-focused for Silvergate and Signature and tech-focused for SVB — and a high volume of “hot deposits” that were prone to flight in search of the best return on their money. 

For SVB, the most significant bank failure of the three — and the largest since 2008 and the crash of Washington Mutual — the customer concentration and short-term deposit risk it carried was set against a longer-term investment portfolio that had been clobbered by the doubling of interest rates over the course of 2022 in the wake of the Federal Reserve’s monetary tightening policies. 

“I have trouble understanding how this can happen, that you’re taking in a lot of the short-term deposits and making a lot of long-term investments,” said Community Home Lenders Association (CHLA) Executive Director Scott Olson during a webinar this week focused on assessing SVB’s failure and its consequences. CHLA serves small and mid-sized independent mortgage banks.

“I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time,” Olson added, “but how many times do we have to see this before we learn that it’s a very, very risky strategy.”

In fact, the rate environment that spurred the liquidity crisis at SVB also has wreaked havoc on bank bond portfolios generally.

“As a result of the higher interest rates, longer-term maturity assets acquired by banks when interest rates were lower are now worth less than their face values,” said Martin Gruenberg, chairman of the Federal Insurance Deposit Corp. (FDIC) in recent speech at the Institute of International Bankers. “The result is that most banks have some amount of unrealized losses on securities. 

“The total of these unrealized losses, including securities that are available for sale or held to maturity, was about $620 billion at yearend 2022. Unrealized losses on securities have meaningfully reduced the reported equity capital of the banking industry.”

As of Dec. 31, 2022, SVB had a total a securities-investment portfolio of $120.1 billion, including more than $16 billion in Treasury securities and some $64 billion in agency-issued mortgage-backed securities, according to the bank’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Much of that MBS portfolio involves mortgages originated prior to the Fed-induced rate run-up, when 30-year fixed mortgage rates were at 3% or less, versus now, when they are more than twice that mark.

The bulk of SVB’s investment portfolio, some $91.3 billion, including $57.7 billion in MBS, is marked as being “held to maturity.” The balance of the SVB portfolio ($26.1 billion) was listed as “available for sale” (AFS), per the SEC filings. The bank also listed some $2.7 billion in non-marketable equity securities. 

In early March, the bank sold roughly $21 billion of its AFS portfolio, recording a $1.8 billion loss due to the volatile rate environment. The bond sale was required, in part, to compensate for a large exodus of deposits in 2022 as the tech industry faltered, which created liquidity issues for the lender.

In the wake of that bond-sale loss, SVB announced it would seek to raise capital to replenish its equity, which spooked the markets, icing the fundraising plan. The bank’s customers, already dealing with a downturn in their high-flying industry, also were alarmed by the exposure of SVB’s precarious finances — which led to a social media-amplified run on the bank and its subsequent collapse.

“They [SVB] had immense concentration risk in the tech space [in terms of customers],” said Brian Hale, founder and CEO of consulting firm Mortgage Advisory Partners. “And they completely mismanaged, in my opinion, the duration risk [of their investment portfolio].”

“When you have long-term assets [MBS] that are financed with short-term deposits, if the deposits begin to get repriced [upward, and you’ve locked in your asset yield [too low] because your deposit costs were [low at the time], when those short-term deposits get repriced [higher], that’s the definition of disintermediation.”

IMBs don’t face a disintermediation challenge because they don’t deal with deposits or maintain long-term investment portfolios. They do, however, utilize bank warehouse lines of credit to help fund mortgage originations,

“This is purely a lend long borrow short problem that these guys [SVB ] got themselves into,” said Dave Stevens, CEO of Mountain Lake Consulting and past president and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association, who also spoke about SVB’s failure during the recent webinar. “IMBs don’t retain much risk. They are primarily pass-through entities … with an outstanding pipeline of loans that are locked until they close and get sold.”

Warehouse lines

Stevens added, however, that the big threat with the recent bank failures is the potential for a “contagion” effect.

“How do you control the potential spread of this to other banks around the country that are behaving the same way?” he asked. “That’s the other shoe to drop.

“For IMBs, what you need to be thinking about is where are your warehouse lines, and do have enough diversified options for warehouse lines should one of the banks that you do business with potentially be at risk?”

Stevens stressed that, in his opinion, the recent bank failures are not likely to have a contagion effect. He estimated that there are no more than a dozen banks nationwide that have an “overconcentration in long, underwater investments in the Treasury markets and the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) market.”

Rob Nunziata, co-CEO of independent mortgage lender FBC Mortgage, said FBC works with a number of warehouse lenders, small and large, including Texas Capital BankWestern AllianceBank of America and Veritex Community Bank.

“I’ve talked to all of our warehouse lenders,” he said. “They’ve all said the same think, ‘It’s business as usual.’ 

“What they’re seeing is that it is a very regional situation [with the bank failures]. … Basically, they are saying that they’ve got strong balance sheets and don’t anticipate anything to change … based on what’s currently happening.”

Nunziata added that the optimistic outlook from warehouse lenders could change in the future, of course, “but as of now, it’s really that same message from all the warehouse banks we work with.”

Nunziata’s assessment of the warehouse-lending space is echoed in a recent posting on Texas Capital Bank’s LinkedIn page, which states the following:

“We have purposefully built Texas Capital Bank to operate from a position of financial strength and stability and to serve our clients through market and rate driven cycles. Thanks to our actions in 2021 and 2022, we have peer-leading balance-sheet strength, with 18% of our total assets in cash and 30% in liquid assets, along with 13% common equity Tier 1 capitalization. Each of these metrics puts us among the best-capitalized banks in the United States, including in comparison to the largest U.S. firms.”

Still, CHLA President Taylor Stork, who also is chief operating officer at Developer’s Mortgage Co., said IMBs should be in close communications with their warehouse lenders at this time. Stork spoke during the same webinar that Stevens and Olson participated in this week.

“In the warehouse space right now, every single IMB operator needs to be on the phone with their warehouse provider having a very, very open honest two-way conversation,” he said. “Here’s where I am. Here’s my cash position. Here’s my liquidity position. What’s yours? How do you look? How do we make sure that we work well together?”

Bank failures and fears of margin calls

The 2-year Treasury yield on Monday, March 13, recorded its biggest drop since the stock market crash of 1987, though it rebounded a bit on Tuesday. Likewise, the 10-year Treasury rebounded some on Tuesday, after hitting a five-week low of 3.51% on Monday.

The sudden rate plunge in recent days prompted both Davis and Hale to raise the prospect of mortgage banks being hit with potential margin calls.

“You’ll remember at the beginning March and April of 2020, at the beginning of [the pandemic], rates dropped precipitously,” Hale said. “Well, a lot of mortgage companies got nailed.

“I hope the industry learned from that to some degree, but I talked to some people today that are nervous about margin calls around the interest rate move.”

Stevens added during the SVB-focused webinar: “I think anybody who’s hedging the pipeline right now knows that they’re going to get margin calls. I think it’s a given unless the bond market just reverts back, which I don’t think is going to happen right away.”

John Toohig, head of whole-loan trading Raymond James, said if there was a margin-call rush, he did not see signs of it on his trading desk as of Monday, March 13.

“I had plenty of buyers calling me, more bottom-feeders, saying they were available and looking for an opportunistic [asset] pool, but I didn’t have any sellers calling me, looking for an exit,” Toohig said. “I did not see forced sellers [a sign of margin calls], so If it happened, I didn’t have vision into that, but that’s not to say what other desks or sellers experienced.”

Spencer Kallick, a partner focused on real estate transactions and land-use entitlement at the law firm of Allen Matkins, said he remains an optimist about the real estate market and the longer-term outlook for the U.S. economy. Assuming he’s correct, then maybe March for the mortgage industry will leave as a lamb. We’ll have to all ride it out and see.

When it comes to people’s “common sense,” however, Kallick is less sanguine, saying it sometimes seems in short supply today.

“I think sometimes in this in this very high-stakes, fast-paced world, some of the common sense goes out the window, and some of the best practices go out the window,” he said. “That was the case here [with SVB’s failure], on the bank side, but also on the borrower side, and on the on the business side of things.

“But I don’t think that this [the fallout from the recent bank failure] is going to spread like wildfire for two reasons: One, because I think that it’s a case of several banks failing that are very heavily concentrated in one area, and I think most banks are much more diversified. I also think the other thing, quite candidly, is that the Biden administration [via its recent expansion of liquidity options for banks and its action to make whole all depositors at SVB and Signature Bank] has shown a strong willingness to step in and make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”



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Consumer prices climbed at a slower pace in February, keeping alive the hope that the Federal Reserve may pause the federal funds rate hikes in its meeting next week following the Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank failures

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by 6% in February before seasonal adjustment compared to one year ago, lower than the 6.4% increase recorded in the 12 months ending in January, according to data released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The year-over-year increase can be attributed to large annual jumps in the indexes for transportation services (+10.2%), energy services (+13.3%), and food (+9.5%). Consumer prices fell in energy commodities (-1.4%), gasoline (-2%) and used cars and trucks (-13.6%). 

Meanwhile, the CPI increased 0.4% on a monthly basis in February on a seasonally adjusted basis, after rising 0.5% in January. Transportation services jumped 1.1% and shelter had a 0.8% increase. But utility gas service declined by 8%, and fuel oil fell by 7.9%. 

“Before this week’s bank failures and growing risks in the banking sector, the February inflation report would have meant that it was all but certain that the Federal Reserve would continue to raise rates,” Lisa Sturtevant, Bright MLS chief economist, said in a statement. 

“The labor market is still proving to be surprisingly resilient in the face of eight rate hikes over the past year. But the recent failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank have complicated the picture.”

Monetary policy observers had previously forecasted that the Fed would increase the federal funds rate by 50 basis point increase in the meeting scheduled for next week. However, it’s now growing the group of observers believe another hike could be counterproductive to manage the current turbulence. 

A liquidity crisis hit American banks amid a deposit run. Silicon Valley Bank collapsed last week, the biggest bank failure since Washington Mutual in 2008. Signature Bank closed its doors on Sunday. And others are looking for ways to improve their liquidity to avoid a crisis. 

“We now expect the FOMC to pause [the federal funds rate] at its March 21-22 meeting,” wrote a team of analysts at Goldman Sachs. “It will be hard to be completely confident in the near term that Sunday’s intervention will halt the pressure on smaller banks, who play a large macroeconomic role and could become considerably more conservative in their lending.”

Several other Fed observers told HousingWire on Monday that they expect a 25 bps hike next week.

In a joint statement on Sunday, the U.S. Department of Treasury, the Fed and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announced the approval of interventions in Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. They also approved depositors’ access to all their money and additional funding for banks. 

The housing sector  

According to Sturtevant, despite reports of rents and home prices falling across many markets, housing costs for homeowners, which account for more than 30% of the inflation index, remained higher than the overall figure in February. 

“Housing costs are a key driver of the inflation figures, but they are also a lagging indicator. It typically takes six months for new rent data to be reflected in the CPI. The quirk in how housing cost data are collected contributes to overstating current inflation,” Sturtevant said. 

Month over month, the shelter index was up 0.8%, with a 0.8% increase in rent and 2.3% for lodging away from home. Compared to a year ago, the shelter index was up 8.1% in February, with rents increasing 8.8%. 

The current uncertainty brings an upside to the housing market: mortgage rates are in a downward trend. At Mortgage News Daily, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 6.57% on Tuesday morning, down 19 basis points from the previous day. 

“A pause in rate hikes and a flight to more secure investments will bring mortgage rates down, which could help prop up a subdued spring housing market,” Sturtevant said. 



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Despite affordability challenges, the Hispanic homeownership rate reached 48.6% in 2022, the eighth consecutive year of growth. 

Latinos added a net total of 349,000 homeowner households last year, which is one of the largest single year gains over the last decade, the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals (NAHREP) said in its 2022 state of Hispanic homeownership report on Tuesday. 

Since 2014, when homeownership rates among Latinos began increasing following the Great Recession, 2.3 million net new Hispanic homeowner households had been added to the market, accounting for 24.4% of overall homeownership growth. Today, there are 9.2 million Hispanic homeowner households.

Latinos made up for 38.7% of all household formations last year. This is in contrast to the previous two years when an unexpected boom in non-Hispanic White household formations nearly doubled that of Latino households. 

The shift in recent trends was expected, the report notes, as the relative youth and growing population of the Latino community would add to new household formations

Latinos trend younger as homeowners. About 70.6% Latinos who purchased a home with a mortgage in 2021 were under the age of 45, compared to 63.9% of the general population, and 61.5% of non-Hispanic White buyers, according to data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA).

About 33% of Latinos aged 45 and under have the credit characteristics to qualify for a mortgage. Among those who don’t already have a mortgage, the share of mortgage-ready Latinos increases to 39%, according to Freddie Mac

Latinos have the largest near mortgage-ready population of any racial or ethnic group, the report noted.

Latinos tend to be concentrated in larger cities and coastal markets where home prices are high, the report said. The rapid rise in interest rates had a cooling effect on the overheated housing market, which in turn created new barriers to affordability. The rise in interest rates dramatically increased monthly mortgage payments, even in markets that experienced price reductions. 

NAHREP noted ample opportunity markets in states such as Texas and midwestern markets that traditionally haven’t had large Latino populations.

Texas has consistently topped the list for most Latino net migration, best opportunity markets and producing the greatest number of new Latino homeowners. Between 2020 and 2022, Texas saw a net gain of nearly 150,000 Latino residents. McAllen, Brownsville, and El Paso, Texas also made up the top three opportunity markets for Latinos, based on the number of mortgage-ready Latinos and affordability. 

“Despite market challenges, the future of homeownership growth will continue to rely on Latinos, given that they are young, growing in population, and rapidly forming new households,” according to NAHREP. 

The increase in Special Purpose Credit Programs (SPCPs) could play a promising role in closing the non-Hispanic White and Latino homeownership gap, NAHREP said. SPCP mortgage types include refinance, purchase, construction, home equity lines of credit (HELOC) and down payment or closing cost assistance. 

In 2023, both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will run scaled multi-metropolitan statistical area (MSA) pilot SPCPs with selected lenders in various cities and metro areas. 

Numerous lenders are expected to bring their own SPCPs to market this year, opening the door for new programs that could address common underwriting issues, such as debt-to-income ratios and non-W2 incomes, two factors that disproportionately impact the Latino community, according to the report.

NAHREP conducted its annual Latino Buyers Survey from January 1 to February 13, 2023, to gauge Latino home buying trends across the country. 

The survey was administered online and received 510 responses. NAHREP conducted in-depth interviews with all 25 top Latino real estate practitioners.



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Local housing markets is a HousingWire magazine feature spotlighting housing trends across the country.

New York City, New York

In many ways the spring of 2022 marked the full return of New York City and for a real estate agent like Johnson Tsai, a lead agent at REAL, this meant a massive up-tick in rental demand. “We are typically super busy from March through August and sometimes even into October,” Tsai said. “This seasonal trend came back last year and then we had even more people mov-ing back who had left at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Things finally slowed down in November and I expect them to pick back up in the spring. It is still kind of a weird market, but it is going back to a little bit more normal.”

Tsai works with both homebuyers and tenants and while he says his business is typically split 50/50 between buyers and tenants, he has noticed a shift as mortgage rates have risen over the past six months. “Given the current market, my business is at least about 60% renters and the other 30% to 40% is buyers and sellers,” Tsai said. He also noted that he expects this ratio to continue in 2023 and the ratio of his business to potentially increase this spring.

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The housing market in New York City, New York

Sarasota, Florida

On Florida’s Gulf Coast, Sarasota is the gateway to some of the state’s most famous beaches, including Lido Key and Siesta Key. The sugar-white sands of the local beaches have always been a draw for both tourists and prospective homebuyers, but according to lo-cal eXp Realty agent Sandy Williamson they have been enticing even more buyers than usual over the past few years. “A lot of people are moving here from other places,” she said. “They want to avoid state income tax and they don’t want to live in all that bad weather anymore.” Although Sarasota is on the coast, Williamson said the fact that it lies about 20 miles inland helps protect it from flood waters during hurricane season.

Williamson noted that the housing market slowed down in the fall, following typical seasonal trends. But, home prices were still up over 15% year over year, ac-cording to Redfin. As we head further into 2023, Williamson said she expects to see the usual increase in demand, but buyers are less optimistic than they were a year ago. “Buyers are a little scared because the majority of the people moving here are going to retire soon or are retired, so they may be living off investments in the stock market and that has been a bit touch and go lately, so I think buyers might be a bit more conservative in their budgets and look at getting a mortgage instead of paying cash for their home and having all their money tied up,” Williamson explained.

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The housing market in Sarasota, Florida

Seattle, Washington

The Pacific Northwest and Seattle, in particular, get a bad rap for being perpetually overcast and constantly rainy, but Amy Breach, a local Keller Williams agent and member of The Hill Team, says that the stereotype isn’t accurate. “We have mild temperatures — it’s not too extreme in any direction and yet we have the beauty of all four seasons,” Breach said.

“Summers just come to life here. You can feel the energy shift during the summer when the sun is out and the whole city is just shining.” In addition to great weather, Breach also noted the wide variety of environments within a few hours of the city, from beaches, to mountains, forests and deserts. The area’s natural beauty as well as abundance of job opportunities has been attracting homebuyers to Seattle for years, and while many migration studies have noted that people have left Seattle for more affordable metros, Breach said that she has not noticed a major change in demand.

“There are always flocks of buyers from out of state and out of county.” Although Breach says the market cooled off recently as interest rates rose to some of their highest levels in decades, she said it had not turned into a buyer’s market and didn’t expect it to switch in the near future. “The market is more of a balance market now,” she said. “We have more inventory than we have had in years, and we have almost enough buyers to support that inventory.”

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The housing market in Seattle, Washington

Racine, Wisconsin

Marcia Ricchio, a RE/MAX Newport Elite agent, was surprised to find out that her market of Racine, Wisconsin, was one of the hottest housing markets in the country this past fall, according to Realtor. com. For Ricchio, the most challenging part of the housing market slowdown has been trying to bridge the gap between sellers, who are still expecting sky-high prices and multiple offer situations, and buyers, who are grappling with rising mortgage rates and mounting affordability issues.

Despite these challenges, Ricchio said homes that are move-in ready and priced right are still moving quickly and can still result in bidding wars. “We have to be a lot more diligent in pricing homes and getting sellers to understand that if they really want to sell, then my proposed price is a realistic number,” she said. “If they say yes and their home looks amazing, it is gone almost immediately.”

Located on the shores of Lake Michigan and between Milwaukee in the north and Chicago in the south, Racine has been attracting homebuyers looking for a bit more bang for their buck for years. “We have a downtown that is small but not too small with lots of activities and great restaurants, and then we also have the lake and some of the nicest beaches in the country — I just love this city,” Ricchio said.

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The housing market in Racine, Wisconsin

Middlesex County, Connecticut

Including the Greater Hartford metropolitan area, Middlesex County is home to some of the largest cities in Connecticut, including Middletown, East Hartford and the state capital of Hartford. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Connecticut real estate market has witnessed somewhat of a renaissance after slowing to a near halt in the mid to late-2010s. “During the pandemic, a lot of New York residents wanted to get out of the city and just have more land for themselves and their families,” Michael Sklutovsky, a local eXp Realty agent, said.

“Connecticut is close enough to the city that they could still work in the city once things opened up, but it also had the benefit of being more rural. That combination brought a lot of more business to Connecticut.” Despite this upward momentum, market conditions in Connecticut have cooled in recent months as interest rates have gone up on top of typical seasonal trends. “February is usually my slowest month,” he said. “But I feel it will pick up in the summer like it usually does. Supply is still short, so I don’t expect prices to go down too much. It is still a good time to sell.”

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The housing market in Middlesex County, Connecticut


This article was originally published in the February/March issue of HousingWire Magazine. Click here to read the full magazine
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The housing market is stuck in a standoff. On one side, you have buyers, repeatedly beaten with high home prices, higher mortgage rates, and almost non-existent affordability. On the other, you have the sellers, who are sitting on low-interest-rate mortgages, unwilling to take a price lower than they want, waiting for rates to come back down, so the bidding wars begin all over again. This standoff has caused the housing market to come to a halt, with inventory at unbelievably low levels and no one willing to buy or sell.

But weren’t we supposed to be past this? When rates dropped earlier this year, the housing market looked like it was on a fast track to a real estate revival. But now, homebuyers, sellers, and investors don’t know where to turn. And that’s precisely why we brought on HousingWire Lead Analyst Logan Mohtashami, the one person who knows the real estate market better than the rest. Last time we had Logan on, he debunked the claim of a 2008-style housing crash repeat, and now, he’s on to forecast when the housing market could finally reach a healthy point again.

Logan knows why homeowners aren’t selling, why buyers aren’t bidding, and when mortgage rates will come back down. With some simple stats and data, Logan lays out almost exactly what would have to happen for us to enter a normal housing market and gives a rough timeline of when we can expect these changes to take place. And if you’re still on the “it’s gonna crash!” bandwagon, we’d suggest sticking around for Logan’s full explanation, as it may completely reverse what you thought was conceivable.

Click here to listen on Apple Podcasts.

Listen to the Podcast Here

Read the Transcript Here

Watch the Podcast Here

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In This Episode We Cover

  • Mortgage rate forecasts and what has to “break” for rates to come back down
  • Foreclosures, distressed sellers, and why there isn’t more inventory on the market 
  • Homebuyers vs. sellers and why neither of these two will make moves until the other does
  • 2008 vs. 2023 and why a Great Recession repeat is a lot less likely than you think
  • What could cause affordability to rise and help homebuyers get into properties
  • Rent growth declines and why rents are starting to stall even as homebuying becomes challenging
  • The commercial real estate “crash” and which sector is most primed for price cuts
  • And So Much More!

Links from the Show

Connect with Logan:

Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Check out our sponsor page!

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.



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Fannie Mae has approved six firms to handle its new valuation initiative, which cuts traditional appraisers out of the process and potentially represents the biggest shift in the valuation space in years.

Fannie Mae last Wednesday updated its Selling Guide to include more options for property valuations, saying that the GSE is “moving away from implying that an appraisal is a default requirement.”

Those options include value acceptance – formerly known as appraisal waivers – as well as “value acceptance plus property data and hybrid appraisals.”

The participating firms, which will collect appraisal data and put it through Fannie Mae’s API, include the biggest name in the mortgage tech space: Solidifi, Class Valuation, Clear Capital, Mueller Services, Inc., Accurate Group and Black Knight‘s Collateral Analytics LLC.

For the new value acceptance plus property data option, third parties are authorized to do that collection at the property site, as long as lenders verify that they have a background check, have been “professionally trained” and are competent to do that collection. This data can only be submitted through Fannie Mae’s “Property Data API.”

In a statement Friday, Accurate Group said it has completed more than three million property data inspections and hybrid appraisals through its ValueNet suite of products.

Accurate Group is one of the two companies under the approved service providers for Fannie Mae’s Value Acceptance + Property Data that also offers title and closing solutions along with valuation services, said Paul Doman, president and CEO of Accurate Group.

“That’s a big statement – we’re a one-stop shop for lenders giving them a significant advantage over their competitors,” Doman remarked. “Our appraisal, property inspection, title and closing technologies are designed to plug into any digital platform.”

Among other initiatives the company is taking to digitize its real estate lending process is expanding its affiliate appraisal management platform AppraisalWorks to include title and closing services, Doman added.

Kenon Chen, executive vice president of strategy and growth at Clear Capital, told HousingWire last week that the potential for modernization in the industry is huge with Fannie’s announcement.

“This is a standardized data collection done at the property, which brings objective, transparent data into the whole process,” he said. “I think that not only drives this program, but paves the way for a better appraisal process when an appraisal is needed.”

Appraisers, as one would expect, are up in arms about Fannie Mae’s new initiative.

“I encourage all appraisers to take a very serious examination of their current business model,” wrote Washington-based appraiser Dave Towne on AppraisersBlog.com. “Shift NOW as much appraisal work as possible away from Fannie Mae. Because if the Fannie Mae trend continues, you won’t have any of that business in the future anyway.”

One appraiser of 23 years told HousingWire that there are real questions to be asked about the reliability of people hired to collect the data on behalf of the vendors, which could be real estate agents or others Fannie Mae deems “professionally trained.”

“I have found that there is a wide range of competence when it pertains to agents,” the appraiser said. “There are a lot of agents that are just in the business of selling with no real idea of what it is they are selling.  Agents are coached to use sources such as county records to state property square footage. I am not confident that many will what to take on that task as it could lead to bigger issues for them down the road. What  if they miss-measured a property that now is their listing?”



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Despite the housing market cool down, homeowners with mortgages, which accounts for roughly 63% of all properties, gained $1 trillion in equity between the fourth quarter of 2021 and the fourth quarter of 2022, according to a report released Thursday by CoreLogic.

On average, U.S. homeowners with mortgages gained $14,300 in equity, a jump of 7.3%, from Q4 2021 to Q4 2022. While this is still a strong gain, it is down markedly from the average yearly equity increase of $63,100 recorded in the first quarter of 2022.

Homeowners in Florida recorded the highest level of annual equity growth at an average of $49,000 in Q4 2022. This trend looks to be continuing as prices were up 13.4% year over year in Florida in January.

Hawaii (+$37,100) and New Jersey (+$35,900) rounded out the top three states with the highest annual equity gains in the fourth quarter of 2022.

On the other end of the spectrum, Idaho (-$21,400), Washington (-$18,900), California (-$8,500), Utah (-$4,600) and Washington, D.C. (-$8,300), all posted year-over-year equity decreases in the fourth quarter of 2022.

“While equity gains contracted in late 2022 due to home price declines in some regions, U.S. homeowners on average still have about $270,000 in equity more than they had at the onset of the pandemic,” Selma Hepp, the chief economist at CoreLogic, said in a statement. “Even in Idaho, where borrowers were the most vulnerable to losses, the typical homeowner with a mortgage still has about $250,000 in remaining home equity.”

Year over year, the total number of homes in negative equity, meaning that the borrower owes more on their mortgage than they home is currently worth, was down 2% to 1.2 million homes or roughly 2.2% of all mortgage properties in the fourth quarter of 2022.

Looking ahead, based on the Q4 2022 book of mortgages, if home prices fall by 5%, 215,000 more properties would fall underwater.

“With 66,000 borrowers entering negative equity in the fourth quarter, the total number of underwater properties is now approaching levels seen at the end of 2021, which was the lowest since the Great Recession,” Hepp said. “The new hot spots for equity declines are largely markets that have seen the most significant home price deceleration, including Boise, Idaho; the San Francisco Bay Area; cities in Utah; Phoenix and Austin, Texas.”



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