Skip to main content

Posted November 23, 2015

Fannie Mae, What a Gal!
You may want to sit down for this.  While you’re at it, make sure you’re not operating heavy machinery or drinking milk – you might shoot it right out your nose when you read this.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Fannie Mae – the residential finance company, not the maiden aunt who always brings a tuna casserole to every family gathering – recently announced that it would allow lenders to use employment and income information from a database operated by the credit bureau Equifax to verify borrowers’ creditworthiness.  This means that the paper chase of tracking down and collecting pay stubs and tax data for a home loan application would be a thing of the past.  Yes, you read that correctly: Fannie Mae is doing something to HELP streamline the home loan process.  (If the shock of that news just caused you to shoot milk out of your nose or drop your clipboard into the gaping maw of a large machine, you have no one to blame but yourself – you were warned.)  But wait, there’s more!

Good old Fannie also announced changes that could ease mortgage credit: in mid-2016, it would ease the lender process for granting loans to borrowers who don’t have a credit score.  What?!  In that same time frame, Fannie said it would start looking at “trended” credit data from Equifax and TransUnion.  This information will help Fannie Mae see if borrowers are paying off their credit card bill every month or just making the minimum payment and/or if they’re allowing the balances to rise.  Borrowers who are making the full payment could see perks.  According to Steve Chaouki, head of TransUnion’s financial services group, this would enable lenders to approve more customers and give customers better rates.

Very Interesting!
According to the NAR, first-time home buyers comprised 32% of existing-home sales in August of this year.  That’s only mildly interesting, sure, but look at how those sales break down:

Buyers age 34 and under accounted for 29% of those sales
Renters accounted for 38% of first-time home buyers

Are you ready for this?

Almost 50% of those first-time home buyers were 35-55 years old!


Not to discount The Millennials (that sounds like the name of a wedding band), but there’s a huge segment of first-time home buyers who are older that should not be taken lightly.  It’s fair to say that the 35-55 year-old segment is reasonably tech savvy, so mobile apps and such are still a big part of their lives, but they’re of the generation that still likes to do things face to face – we should all keep that in mind when we’re marketing to first-time home buyers.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Numbers Don't Lie, But Wherein Lies the Truth? (Posted November 21, 2016)

Said with enough conviction, you can make almost anything sound true.   Preface the fabrication with “according to a recent bi-partisan government study,” and you’re three quarters of the way to selling the lie to a lot of people.   Seriously, try this. The next time you’re at a dinner party or having coffee with friends, pepper this little tidbit into the conversation: “I read something really interesting the other day.   According to a recent bi-partisan government study – I think it took them three years to get it all done – middle-aged men who drive either a Toyota Camry or a Honda Odyssey have more testosterone than younger men who drive either a Ford F150 or a Dodge Charger.”   You’ll get some raised eyebrows and looks of mild disbelief, but don’t let that deter you.   Just lift up your hands, palms outward, and say, “I just think it’s interesting, and it makes sense when you think about it” – and then change the subject to something completely u...

Dumb as (or Smart as) a Box of Rocks (Posted June 27, 2016)

Obviously, you all want to know what Brexit means to the economy and the housing market specifically.   So do I!   But since my crystal ball is at the cleaner’s, let’s give the Brits and the European Union a little time to work out the terms of their separation and look at something else.   What’s a “fad ”?   With the help of Google, this is what I got as a definition: “an intense and widely shared enthusiasm for something, especially one that is short-lived and without basis in the object's qualities; a craze.” In April 1975, an advertising executive by the name of Gary Dahl invented the Pet Rock.   The idea came from his sitting in a bar with some friends who were complaining about the cost and time required to take care of various types of pets.   He marketed his “pets” by placing a rock in a box cut and shaped like one you would get at the pet store to carry home a puppy or a kitten.   Along with the box and the rock, a booklet was included...

Left Behind (Posted April 4, 2016)

It’s highly likely that almost every single one of you already read the Yahoo! Finance article about the survey that Chase recently completed.   For the seven people who decided to take a nap under a rock last week, I’m going to share some of the major talking points here – the rest of you can step away and have an ice cream or paint your cat’s toenails.   First off, the survey shows that an ALARMING 68% of Americans are starting the home search on their own (gasp!) with 45% using a computer or laptop (as opposed to some other type of technologically advanced processor like a microwave oven) as the first step in this search and 13% using their mobile devices.   (In other related news from the Department of the Obvious, scientists have found that fish still have no use of a bicycle and looking directly at the sun is inadvisable.)   With numbers like these, we should just throw in the towel and join the circus, right?   Here’s the weird thing: in the ...