Office of the Chief Economist

Blog

CoreLogic’s Office of the Chief Economist (OCE) employs some of the brightest minds and most often quoted professionals in the housing ecosystem, including Molly Boesel, Selma Hepp and other experts who know how to best interpret data trends and tell you what they mean. The OCE authors CoreLogic’s regular monthly economic reports: The Home Price Index (HPI), the Loan Performance Index (LPI), the Single-Family Rent Index (SFRI) and the S&P Case-Shiller Index (CSI). Our economists also routinely weigh in on other key housing topics on our blog, podcasts and videos. Read previous blog posts from CoreLogic's economists.
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August 31, 2020

Flight to Quality after COVID-19: Loans to High-DTI Borrowers Down ...

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, many lenders are reportedly tightening credit by raising the minimum FICO score requirement or increasing down payment requirements to 20%.[1]  The credit tightening is driven by a familiar credit market phenomenon known as flight to quality – in time of ec...

August 28, 2020

Almost a Third of Metropolitan Areas at High Risk of Home Price Dec...

August 27, 2020 | 12:26PM ET Selma Hepp, Deputy Chief Economist Following the longest period of economic growth in the U.S., the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic led to a decline in economic activity and a resultant recession. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, February 2020 mar...

August 17, 2020

Millennials are Driving the Demand for Condos as Sales Increase in ...

Austin, New York, and Naples experienced increase in condo sales in 2019 For millennials, first-time homebuyers (FTHBs), and down-sizing baby boomers, condos can be the most reasonable option when buying a property. Their values and lifestyle drive them toward buying condos because they tend to b...

June 17, 2020

COVID-19 May Have Changed Home Buying Patterns Permanently

Home buying has always been driven by principles of affordability, location, and love.  During this COVID-19 pandemic, property search remains consistent.  That’s a digital exercise and hasn’t been affected. Home buyers continue to focus on a city or polygon region of an area where...

April 23, 2020

Upon Transition from LIBOR to SOFR

A Look Back at Another Episode of Reference Rate Replacement for an Adjustable-Rate HECM A transition from London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) to Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) as the new benchmark rate is well underway. Since the publication of SOFR in April 2018, average daily tradin...

April 1, 2020

What is the Impact of a Recession on the Housing Market?

There is a widespread expectation that the US as well as the whole world have entered or will be in recession amid the coronavirus pandemic. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan forecast a more than 20% US GDP contraction for next quarter[1] . The International Monetary Fund declared a global recessio...

March 27, 2020

The Top Four Ways Millennials Are Changing the Housing Market

Millennials are now the fastest growing segment of home buyers. The latest U.S. Census Bureau Housing Vacancies and Homeownership report revealed that the homeownership rate for 25 to 34-year-olds has increased from 36.5% in Q4-2018 to 37.6% in Q4-2019.1 With a median adjusted household inco...

January 17, 2020

Mortgage Delinquency Rates for All Loan Types Have Fallen to Their ...

Loans originated in 2015 and 2016 have performed better than loans originated in 2017 and 2018 The CoreLogic Loan Performance Insights Report analyzes mortgage performance for all home loans. Based on this report, the serious delinquency rate for October 2019 was 1.3 percent, representi...

December 18, 2019

HECM Loans in 2018: Borrower Demographics and Ownership Tenure

A reverse mortgage, such as the FHA-insured Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM), offers older homeowners a way to tap into the housing wealth in their home to help increase monthly cash receipts. These owners often have quite modest income: the median income of borrowers who took out a HECM in...

November 13, 2019

Special Report: Amazon HQ2 and the Washington, DC Metro Housing Market

The Amazon HQ2 Announcement: Have Housing Prices Changed a Year Later? On November 13, 2018, Amazon stunned the news cycle by announcing that it was choosing not one, but two sites for the location of its second headquarters (HQ2): Arlington County, Virginia, at Crystal City, and Queens, New York...

September 26, 2019

2018 HMDA Data: High Debt-to-Income Ratio Was the Top Reason for Mo...

More than 1-in-2 denied applications had a DTI above the 43% QM threshold The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently released the 2018 loan-level mortgage lending data submitted by more than 5,600 commercial banks, savings associations, credit unions and mortgages companies covered by the ...

June 20, 2019

Special Report: Investor Home Buying

Don’t Call it a Comeback: Housing Investors Have Been Here for Years Home purchasing activity[i] among investors is on the rise. In 2018, the share of home sales bought by investors reached its highest level in two decades. However, this increase isn’t from big institutional buyers, but rath...