The Blog of Author Mark MacKenzie: It's The Housing Market, Stupid!

According to the MBA, after five consecutive weeks in which the mortgage purchase application index remained below 270, signaling weak demand for real estate, the index rose 3.9% this past week to 277.7. The 30-year fixed rate mortgage fell from 5.38% to 5.15% for the week ending August 14th. Mor...

According to the Census Bureau total housing permits fell by -1.8% in July from June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 560,000.  Interestingly the decline in housing permits in July was driven by multi-family units.  According to the Census Bureau, single family housing permits were up 5.8%...

The NAR published their quarterly metro home value report this past week.  While there were some bright spots like Elmira, NY, which showed 11.3% year over year appreciation, there is also continued systemic weakness throughout our countries housing markets. Broadly speaking, the median home valu...

The NAR published their quarterly home sales report this past week which shows the rate of home sales for all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia. Of the 51 total markets, 41 of them showed year over year home sales declines from the 2Q of 2008 to the 2Q of 2009. The year over year data...

According to the Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers, confidence fell in August to 63.2 from a July reading of 66. Additionally, the measure of consumer expectations fell to 62.1, the lowest reading since March. The reason these numbers are somewhat alarming is because not only ha...

Colonial Bank became the biggest bank failure this year, the 6th biggest of all time, and the largest since Washington Mutual, as the FDIC took over the company on Friday, according to an article written by Alison Vekshin, David Mildenberg and Dakin Campbell in Bloomberg.com Additionally, four mo...

Due to some recent improvements in seasonal housing data and statistics, a lot of people (Jim Cramer) and media outlets (AP) are beginning to sound the drum for a housing bottom. I thought it would be worth pointing out that much like the weather, the majority of real estate data is best interpre...

According to RealtyTrac, foreclosure filings set a new record in July as they rose 7% from June and are up 32% year over year. According to James J. Saccacio, RealtyTrac's chief executive, "July marks the third time in the last five months where we've seen a new record set for foreclosure activit...

With all of the talk about the recent strength in pending home sales over the past couple of months, there continues to be a headwind-effect between pending contracts and actual existing sales that are reported by the NAR.  The relationship between the two indicators has revealed that pending hom...

The Mortgage Bankers Association announced today that the mortgage purchase application index remains steady but weak as it rose just 1.1% from last week to 267.3.  It is the fifth consecutive week that the index has been below 270. The 30-year fixed rate mortgage jumped from 5.17% to 5.36% for t...