The Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority (WHEDA) will re-enter the affordable home loan market March 1, 2010 with the help of mortgage giant Fannie Mae (FNM: 0.00 N/A).

WHEDA was created in 1972 to offer loans to first-time homebuyers with moderate incomes. It stopped offering the loans in October 2008, because of its inability to raise capital to fund the mortgages.

The WHEDA Fannie Mae Advantage is a product developed by the GSE exclusively for Housing Finance Agencies (HFAs). It includes a low-cost, 30-year fixed interest rate for borrowers with as little as $1,000 upfront. The product includes no private mortgage insurance requirement and a job-loss payment protection, which covers six months of mortgage payments if the borrower loses his or her job.

According to Carl Riedy, vice president of the public entities channel at Fannie, WHEDA is the first HFA to offer the new product.

“The world was very different in October 2008 when we were forced to shut down our program,” said WHEDA executive director Antonio Riley. “Times have changed in the 18 months since we last wrote loans. But we’re confident that the new product we’re offering, the WHEDA Fannie Mae Advantage, is going to meet this new reality as well as the expectations of the marketplace.”

HFAs issue mortgage revenue bonds (MRBs) to fund the investments in single-family mortgages. When the capital markets dried up at the end of 2008, so did the bonds and consequently funding for entities such as WHEDA. The turmoil sparked higher mortgage rates, keeping WHEDA from offering the low-cost loans.

In September 2009, the US Treasury Department began initial discussions to finalize a program to provide liquidity for the HFAs. And in January 2010, the Treasury, working with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) completed implementing the HFA Initiative.

Under the Initiative, the New Issue Bond Program (NIBP) supported new lending from the HFAs, and the Temporary Credit and Liquidity Program (TCLP) delivered relief to the agencies’ financial strains. The Treasury bought $325m of WHEDA’s long-term bonds in 2010, allowing its operations room to relaunch.

“Supporting the work of state and local HFAs is critical to the Administration’s broader initiative to stabilize the housing market, which is helping to keep mortgage rates low and mortgage finance flowing for American households across the country,” said Treasury secretary Tim Geithner at the time.

Participating WHEDA lenders have access to the new Fannie product. All borrowers must be first-time homebuyers, and they must meet income and purchase-price limits, which vary from county to county.

Write to Jon Prior.

Illinois home sales activity jumped 35.6% in Q409, but the median price declined 5.5%, according to the Illinois Association of Realtors (IAR).

The state saw 29,822 homes sold in Q409, up from 21,986 in Q408. The pickup helped close some of a year-over-year gap in sales volume, bringing 2009's total volume to 107,613 homes sold, down 1.4% from 109,195 one year earlier.

Despite the jump in transactions, the statewide median price sat at $155,000 in Q409, down nealry  6 percent from $163,950 in Q408. For all of 2009, the median price of a single-family home in Illinois was $157,000, down 14.6% from $183,900 in 2008.

“In the final quarter of 2009 more than 70% of Illinois counties reporting showed positive year-over-year increases in home sales and nearly 50% marked median price increases as consumers motivated by strong buyer market conditions and the tax credit took opportune action in the Illinois housing market,” said Mike Onorato, IAR president and broker-owner of Onorato Real Estate in Coal City.

“A year ago the economy was in severe turmoil; going forward the focus must be on jobs and reducing the number of foreclosures, which continue to destabilize home prices.”

Despite Onorato's claims, a worsening state economy during the fourth quarter didn't show up in home sales.

“The Illinois economy continued on a downward trajectory in the fourth quarter of 2009,” said Geoffrey Hewings, director of the University of Illinois Regional Economics Applications Laboratory (REAL). “By the end of 2009, the state shed 237,300 jobs in 2009 and 381,500 jobs since the recession began in December 2007. Illinois lost jobs at a faster rate than the United States in 2009.”

“The state never recovered from the 2000-2001 recession and absent a miraculous rate of growth, it may be more than 18 years before the state is back to 2000 employment levels,” Hewings added.

Illinois' statewide housing market is largely dominated by the Chicago metropolitan area. In the nine-county Chicagoland Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area (PMSA), total sales totaled 19,947 in Q409, up 44.9% from Q408’s level of 13,765. The 2009 sales total in Chicago was 69,373, nearly even with 69,406 in 2008.

But the median price in Chicago during Q409 was $187,000, down 13% from $215,000 in Q408. For 2009, the median price was $196,000 in Chicago, down 18.3% from $240,000 in 2008.

Write to Austin Kilgore.

Some buyers appear to be returning to some of the harder-hit housing markets in the Sunshine State, according to data released Friday morning. Florida single-family home sales volume climbed 44% in Q409, compared to Q408, according to statistics from the Florida Association of Realtors.

Home sales volume totaled 43,926 in the quarter, up from 30,610 one year earlier. It’s the sixth-straight quarter of year-to-year increases in homes sales volume within the state, realtors said. In comparison, home sales across the nation increased 13% in Q409, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Condominium sales volume also showed a jump, rising 93% in Q409 from the same quarter in 2008 — marking the fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth for condo sales. Not that sales volume in the Sunshine State could have gotten much worse, as the state regularly posted some of the worst numbers in the nation during the nation's housing crash.

And while sales volume climbs, questions remain. According to a recent survey from the University of Florida’s Bergstrom Center for Real Estate Studies, industry experts and economists still hold some uncertainty on the effects of tightened credit, foreclosures and unemployment on the statewide housing market.

Florida had the fourth highest foreclosure rate in the country during January, according to RealtyTrac. One in 187 home received a foreclosure filing during the month, while the total number of homes receiving a foreclosure filing jumped 15% from one year earlier.

Nonetheless, private investors are starting to “kick the tires” in some markets, according to Timothy Becker, the Bergstrom Center director. He said that investor expectations on returns are falling to more realistic levels, closing the spread between their bids and asking prices.

“These developments bode well for the transaction market when quality properties start coming to the marketplace,” Becker asserted.

Yet, while transaction volumes rise, prices continue to take a hit within the state. The statewide median sales price dropped 13% to $140,000 in Q409, from $160,600 in Q408. Compared the rest of the country, Florida prices fell below the national average of $172,900, a 4.1% drop from Q408m, according to NAR.

Write to Jon Prior.

A new feature accessible through Ellie Mae’s Encompass360 loan origination software (LOS) adds customer lead management functions and product pricing engine (PPE) capabilities.

Mortech, the Nebraska-based developer of Marksman, a PPE and lead management software, said its users can now access the software through ePass, a software platform that connects third party mortgage software with California-based Ellie Mae’s Encompass360 loan origination software.

While there are other PPE and lead management software products already integrated into Encompass360 via ePass, Mortech claims Marksman is the first software that combines both functions that’s available through the platform.

“Not only can mortgage professionals price loans and process them in a robust LOS system, but now lenders can manage their leads prior to them being them auto-populated into the LOS system,” Mortech said.

The integration also works the other way: lenders can access pricing information in Marksman without leaving their Encompass account. A user logged into Marksman can also export leads into Encompass360 in the process of creating a new loan file.

“It is imperative to work with business partners whose strengths we can leverage within a single interface,” says President and Chief Executive Officer Monte Robbins of CapWest Mortgage Corporation, a user of both Encompass360 and Marksman. “The integration of these powerful technologies has helped increase our productivity and efficiency, while complementing our primary focus of providing a superior customer experience.”

The Mortech-Ellie Mae deal comes just weeks after Mortech and Google officially announced a partnership for Google’s [GOOG] new mortgage rate search and comparison tool.

“Encompass and Encompass360 facilitate connections that make it faster, easier and more efficient to conduct business,” says Chief Strategy Officer Jonathan Corr for Ellie Mae. “Freedom of choice, combined with the ability to do more in less time, is something that our customers have come to rely on us to provide. We’re very pleased to be bringing Encompass users a seamless way to access all of the features and benefits of the Mortech Marksman solution.”

Write to Austin Kilgore.

The author held no relevant investments.