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Equity Cushion
You may remember the term “Home ATM” from the mid 2000’s. This term stemmed from the abundance of homeowners who pulled significant amounts of equity from their homes in the form of Home Equity Loans and Lines of Credit. Home values dropping in 2008, 2009 and 2010 caused many homeowners to be ‘underwater’ meaning that, all at once, their home was worth less than they owed.
Today, there are two big differences compared to the Home ATM years.
First, homeowners today have a lot of equity and very few homeowners are underwater. Of all the properties in the U.S. with mortgages, only 2.1% have negative equity. At the end of 2009, 24% of properties were underwater.
Second, homeowners are not pulling cash out of their homes like they were in the mid 2000’s. Net Equity Extraction is only 1.6% of disposable income compared to 8% during the housing bubble years.
Forbearance Falls
The number of loans in forbearance just fell to their lowest level since mid-April.
This is good news for the real estate market.
Less and less people are seeking payment relief on their mortgages.
The number of loans currently in forbearance stands at 7.16%.
This news coincides with the U.S. Unemployment Rate falling to it’s lowest level in 5 months as more people are getting their jobs back.
The economy has added back roughly half of the 22.2 million jobs that were lost in March and April of this year.
Corona Rates
Interest rates on a 30-year mortgage right now are just about the lowest they have ever been in history.
- The rate today is 3.45%
- The lowest-ever in November, 2012 was 3.31%
- A year ago they were 4.35%
So, what gives? Why are rates so low? It turns out that the coronavirus is pushing rates down to historic lows.
The virus is causing uncertainty in the global financial markets. When there is uncertainty, there tends to be a flight from stocks into bonds.
Specifically, there tends to be a flight to U.S. Treasuries.
High demand for U.S. Treasuries means that the interest rates on those bonds goes down.
30-year mortgage rates track the rates on the 10-year Treasury and the 10-year Treasury just hit their lowest rates ever at 1.31%.
The uncertainty around the virus will likely keep rates down for the foreseeable future.
If you haven’t done so already, we encourage you to reach out to your mortgage lender to see if you would benefit by refinancing your loan.
Good Loan News
Here are two recently-announced pieces of really good news for home buyers.
• The Colorado Housing and Finance Authority recently raised the income limit for their down payment assistance program to $115,600.
Now more people can get help with a down payment.
• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac raised their conforming loan limits so that more people can use a conforming loan and not be forced to use a ‘jumbo’ loan.
Contact us if you would like to hear how these pieces of news could help you.
