Gov't Shut Down? Life goes on.

Shared by Brigitte van Dongen
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Nat'l Real Estate Post:
Fannie and Freddie have overpaid mortgage processors $100,000,000, yet they are expecting the mortgage companies to produce absolutely perfect loans or the mortgage companies must buy back the loans.

Remember, FHA and VA loans are assumable.
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He (Trulia chief economist and vice president of analytics Jed Kolko) continued, "We are not at risk of a bubble today, but if prices rose 10% a year for the next three years, we’d all be calling bubble."  --  Christina Mlynski in HousingWire
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Among the 30 largest metropolitan areas analyzed by Zillow, 20 saw annual home price appreciation of at least 10%. Some of the most notable cities with annual increases in August were Sacramento (up 34.1%), Las Vegas (30.6%), San Francisco (28.1%), San Jose (24%), San Diego (23.7%), Phoenix (20.9%), Minneapolis (16.3%) and Seattle (16%).
Meanwhile, national rents also increased in August over the previous month, up 0.5%. The Zillow Rent Index now has a mark of $1,293. On a yearly basis, rents in August rose by 1.9%. -- Evan Nemerof in Origination News
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Quote of the week: "Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense" Ralph Waldo Emerson
Existing home sales in August at 5.8 million up 13.2% from a year ago.
Consumer price index up just 0.1% in August.
The median price of an existing home in August was $212,100 up 14.7% from a year ago.
Shared by Bill Bazzel in Inside Lending News
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However, the analyst added that first-time buyers comprised only 28% of August existing home sales versus 29% last month and versus the historical average of 40% to 45% — a sign entry-level buyer access to mortgage financing may not be improving.

But buyers aren’t the only ones facing tight lending standards. "Historically most builders are small businesses and they are still having difficulty getting construction loans," said Molony. -- Megan Hopkins in HousingWire
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Existing home prices were up just over 12 percent annually in July, according to the latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, which is a three-month running average. The average price of a newly built Lennar home jumped 16 percent annually in the third quarter, while the average price of those built by KB Home surged 23 percent.

So far, even weak demand has pushed prices higher, again, due to historically low supply.

This means that home-price gains, as measured by the Case-Shiller indexes, are likely to remain strong for some time, even if they retreat some from the current pace." -- Dana Olick for CNBC
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Nat'l Real Estate Post:
HUD's new rule: If you list a HUD home, no one else in the company can bring the buyer.  (Now this is just plain dumb).
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According to HUD: 

Sales of new single-family houses in August 2013 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 421,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 7.9 percent (±14.6%)* above the revised July rate of 390,000 and is 12.6 percent (±15.3%)* above the August 2012 estimate of 374,000.

The median sales price of new houses sold in August 2013 was $254,600; the average sales price was $318,900. The seasonally adjusted estimate of new

The U.S. Federal Reserve’s central tendency projections for GDP growth in 2013 and 2014 (excluding the three highest and lowest numbers) were lowered. For 2013, the Fed now expects 2.0 percent to2.3 percent year-on-year GDP growth in the fourth quarter, compared to 2.3 percent to 2.6 percent in its June forecasts. -- From WT100
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The agency's quarterly mortgage metrics report showed that 90.6% of the 26.5 million loans reviewed were performing well in the second quarter, up from 90.2% in the previous quarter and 88.7% a year earlier. The number of foreclosures and "seriously delinquent" loans also dropped to their lowest levels since the crisis hit in 2008. The OCC attributed such improvements to a strengthening economy, servicing transfers, home retention efforts and home forfeiture actions.

However, the OCC also noted a slight increase in loans that were less than 60 days past due after two previous quarters of declines. The percentage of early past-due loans rose 11.6% from the first quarter and 1.8% from a year earlier, equally roughly 2.9% of the mortgage portfolio. Gouldie said this was partly seasonal but added that there are some outliers making early defaults appear larger than it seems. -- Rachel Witkowski in Origination News
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The foreclosure pipeline is finally starting to unclog, impacting smaller default teams at mega servicers and more default outsourcing to special servicers, explained Statebridge Company president and CEO Kevin Kanouff.
"As far as the industry as whole, I think the foreclosure numbers are going down because of three things: home price appreciation leading to lower strategic defaults, more loss mitigation deals getting done and servicers churning through the foreclosure backlog," he said.
Meanwhile, servicers initiated 150,592 new foreclosures, down 50.8% from a year ago.
Christina Mlynski in HousingWire
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Stefan Schulte-Kellinghaus originally shared:

Lisbon, Portugal, Elevador de Santa Justa

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Nat'l Real Estate Post:

 HUD backed off their dual agency rule that was about to go live tomorrow. Looks like there was enough stink raised about it to make someone over there with half a brain to figure out that it must not be such a good idea. At any rate – it’s gone, so the same office can list and sell an FHA short sale. This is good news and we’d like to think that our collective efforts helped in getting this changed.

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Fannie Mae's mortgage purchases fell 7% in August after a slight uptick in July, but commitments to purchase new mortgages from lenders fell to the lowest level in two years. -- Brian Collins in Origination News.
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Nat'l Real Estate Post:
FHA is shutting down, almost.  It is furloughing all but 4% of the staff.  Did you know that between the FHA, VA, and USDA, 45% of all mortgages are done.  FHA is still begging for a bailout.  But the GSE's are rolling in dough from the lawsuits they won.  Unfortunately, the money is going into the Treasury instead of where it would do some good.
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Shared by Dieter Birr
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Nat'l Real Estate Post:
Other federal institutions have been shut down, but not the CFPB. 
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http://www.livescience.com/40162-weirdest-effects-government-shutdown.html
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Jill Pierce is Team Leader with RealEstateAuctions.com