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HOT or NOT October/November: What’s trending in housing right now

HECM counseling, housing vouchers and mortgage tech make the list

1. HECM Counseling

Before you can get a reverse mortgage, you have to submit to financial counseling. And that’s why talking to HECM counselors can be a great way to gauge what’s in the pipeline and identify emerging trends. According to two counselors certified by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to administer reverse mortgage counseling, volume is nearly back to normal following program changes that took effect last year. One housing director said volume jumped from one jumbo counseling every couple of months to 20 in a two-week period.

2. Mortgage Tech

The process of filing mortgage insurance claims is about to get a lot easier thanks to Fannie Mae. The government-sponsored enterprise announced that it is rolling out a new, streamlined MI claims procedure with help from several of the largest MI providers. Fannie Mae claims that the new process, called MI Factor, will save time and cut costs without additional risk. Fannie Mae said that MI Factor makes it easier for mortgage servicers to file MI claims while also eliminating the need for supplemental filings. Servicers are therefore no longer billed for MI claim curtailments.

3. First-time buyers

First-time homebuyers may be facing rising unaffordability but they are still outpacing the share of repeat buyers, according to a report from the Urban Institute. This is nothing new, as first-time homebuyers have dominated the mortgage market for a decade. The latest data shows that gap actually continues to grow. Repeat buyers dominated the market before the housing crisis, but after 2007 that all changed. Since about 2014, that gap has widened. The rising share of first-time buyers can be attributed to the lack of repeat buyers in the housing market.

1. Housing Vouchers

It’s apparently far too difficult for low-income households to use HUD's housing voucher program to gain access to affordable housing and HUD is planning to do something about it. HUD announced that Secretary Ben Carson is establishing a new “Landlord Task Force” as a way to get more landlords to accept housing vouchers, citing two studies that claim the voucher program is not functioning as it should. HUD said the studies show that “most” landlords don't accept housing vouchers and therefore deny affordable housing to those who need it most.  

2. Facebook

Facebook allows landlords and property owners to discriminate against prospective renters and buyers based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, and other factors, HUD said. After months of investigating Facebook’s ad practices, HUD filed a housing discrimination complaint against the social media giant, alleging that it allows advertisers to purposefully exclude certain people from seeing housing ads based on a number of factors that violate the Fair Housing Act. Facebook denies the allegations, saying “There is no place for discrimination on Facebook.”

3. Selling a Home

Home sellers have begun cutting back their listing price, especially at the high end of the housing market, leaving open the possibility that it is now beginning to shift to a buyer’s market. From the beginning of this year, the share of listings with a price cut increased by 1.2 percentage points, the greatest January-to-June increase ever reported and more than double the increase from the same period last year, according to a report from Zillow. And in some markets, the numbers were even higher. For example, in San Diego, 20% of listings had a price cut in June, up from 12% last year.

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