Lending Cafe

Reports from across the country have indicated that home sales have been especially robust over the past several months. Markets nationwide have seen significant rebounds following the burst of the housing bubble back in late 2007, with some areas seeing double digit increases at some points.

This has been especially true in areas where property values far exceed the national average. Vacation hot spots, which for years have maintained a strong rental market, are seeing actual purchases amp up, in many cases sparking intense bidding wars among competing buyers.

The government's Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP 2.0) has helped millions of Americans lower their monthly mortgage payments through a refinance that grants them lowered interest on the loan. Now, a modified version of a bill that was previously shot down by Congress is being reintroduced by a group of senators looking to make mortgage refinance more widely available.

The Responsible Homeowner Refinancing Act of 2013, also known as the The Menendez-Boxer bill - named for the program's authors - would remove several restrictions that currently make HARP 2.0 unattainable for a wide swath of property owners.

According to government-backed mortgage securer Freddie Mac, average interest on conforming loans ticked upward slightly for the second consecutive week as of Thursday, May 16.

Rates on the 30-year fixed-rate home loan offered by the company averaged an interest of 3.51 percent over the period - up from 3.52 percent the week before. This all comes after six consecutive weeks of decreases in interest, as rates inched closer to the all-time lows established in November 2012.

Over the past several months, news regarding the housing market has been extremely sunny, as more citizens have entered into homeownership, signaling increased financial stability for thousands of Americans. However strong the national picture is on average concerning the real estate market, recent reports indicate that some areas still have a long way to go before they can be fully deemed recovered, though signs continue to be positive.

Industry analytics group CoreLogic produced their monthly MarketPulse Report for May on Tuesday, May 14, which indicated that the latest real estate boom has been a somewhat localized phenomena, with specific markets bouncing back much faster than others.

The housing market has seen a steady recovery over the past few months as homeowners across the country have successfully gotten a better handle on their finances and returned to fiscal health. As a result, the number of delinquent homeowners reported by credit agency TransUnion during the first quarter of 2013 shrank markedly compared to the last part of 2012.

According to the group's data, the mortgage delinquency rate was 4.56 percent in the first quarter, down from 5.78 percent in the previous quarter. This marked the largest drop in delinquency the group has witnessed since they began collecting information regarding the mortgage markets in 1992.

After six weeks of record-low interest on fixed-rate conforming home loans, rates spiked unexpectedly last week in response to a better-than-expected jobs report from the Department of Labor. Despite the increase, borrowers are still enjoying some of the lowest interest in history when it comes to purchasing new loans and refinancing existing mortgages.

Government-backed mortgage securer Freddie Mac released their weekly mortgage markets survey on Thursday for the week ending May 9 and reported that average rates have jumped to 3.42 percent, up from the previous survey's 3.35 percent, on the groups 30-year fixed-rate agreement.

As we've discussed in the past on this blog, spring and summer are the busiest seasons for real estate agents, as buyers take advantage of the warmer weather to peruse new properties and purchase a home before the start of the new school year. The new weekly market composite index from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) supports this claim, as the number of applications filed over the period was up 7 percent from the week before.

The MBA index monitors 75 percent of all activity that takes place in the home loan market, looking at new mortgage filings as well as refinance applications. The total number of homeowners who sought to restructure their loans through a refinance was up 8 percent during the period, accounting for 76 of all applications filed - up from 75 percent the previous week.

When the housing bubble burst back in 2007, property values across the country plummeted and thousands of homeowners nationwide found themselves attached to mortgages that cost significantly more than the value of the homes they were financing.

In response, the federal government enacted several programs, including the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP 2.0), that were designed to help homeowners take advantage of mortgage refinance to lower the interest on their home loans and make monthly payments more affordable.

There has been a flurry of good news over the past few months concerning the housing market, as sales have increased continually throughout the U.S. in some of the areas most devastated by the housing bubble burst back in late 2007. However, it's not just primary residences that are seeing a dramatic rebound in sales over the past year, as secondary vacation properties are also experiencing price increases and a shrinking supply.

A recent report from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) has found that total sales activity in the vacation home market was up significantly in 2012 compared to levels in 2011. The 2013 Investment and Vacation Home Buyers Survey from the group monitored an increase of roughly 10 percent over the period.

According to Realtor.com - a housing industry news source - spring and summer are traditionally the most active times of year for real estate sales. One of the main reasons for this is the fact that real estate agents are able to more easily show a property off and spruce the home up before an open house.

This is especially true when the market is favoring sellers, which, according to indications from numerous industry sources, is the case at the moment. When a family sells a home in the spring, for example, it is much easier for them to relocate during the summer as it won't interfere with the upcoming school year.