Kelsey Duffey: Good morning, I m Kelsey Duffey, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations at Walker & Dunlop, and I would like to welcome you to Walker & Dunlop s Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2022 Earnings.
Recently, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced the approval of two new credit scoring models, the FICO 10T and the VantageScore 4.0 for use by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The financial press seems enthralled with the business cycle. Expansion, contraction, rates and stocks up, rates and stocks down. Right now they’re all stumbling over themselves looking for signs of a recession. Recessions, of course, tend to lower rates since the demand for credit drops. European growth projections are poor. No one really knows what is going on in China. In the United States, the Federal Reserve has pushed the Fed Funds rate (the interest rate at which banks and credit unions lend reserve balances to other depository institutions overnight) from near 0 percent to what could be 4.75 percent by year end. There are some signs of softening in the U.S. job market (like job openings declining), but household debt service levels have dropped and savings levels are doing okay. The team at the Mortgage Bankers Association is forecasting appreciation levels near 0 percent for 2023 and 2024. There’s your snapshot! (Today’s podcast is available here. This wee
One issue currently facing the mortgage industry is a lack of supply, or as rapper Cardi B said over the weekend in her analysis of high home prices and rents, “a lack of m f ing inventory.” She does have a point: Despite the increase in rates continuing to dampen demand and put downward pressure on home prices, inventory remains inadequate. Versus last year, shoppers do have more homes to consider, although inventory still isn’t back to pre-pandemic levels. Who wants to sell their home when they have a 3 percent 30-year fixed rate mortgage and move to a home where the rate would be closer to 6 percent? We learned yesterday that home values fell for the second consecutive month and builders are cutting prices and adding incentives as the confidence of builders in the new home market fell for the ninth straight month, according to NAHB. The way to stabilize values is to build more housing, but if nobody wants to build then that presents a problem. And who woul