#freddie-mac

#freddie-mac

Many people successfully purchase homes while still carrying student debt. What matters most isn't whether you have debt, it's how well you manage it.

JPMorgan Chase's origination volume hit $13.7 billion in the first quarter, down 14% from the prior quarter and up 46% from the same period last year. Retail channels drove most of the production, accounting for 63.5% of the total. The bank's home lending revenues reached $1.23 billion in the first quarter, up 2% year over year.

Cash-out refinance volume rose 9% from February and 21% from March 2025, while rate-and-term refinance volume fell 34% month over month but remained more than 66% higher than a year ago.

Eric Ellman, president of the National Consumer Reporting Association (NCRA) said we learned from the 2008 housing crisis that more data is better than less data, especially when the financial stakes are so high. He added, The cost of being right for spending an extra $100 is so much stronger a case to make than the downside risk for a consumer who might lose thousands over the lifetime of a loan.

Ginsburg stated that treating builder business as a core pillar rather than a side channel reflects a broader industry shift. He believes a healthy balance of builders should be around 15% to 20% of the overall retail book of business.

Refinance applications increased for the fourth straight week to the strongest pace since 2022, with conventional refinances up 20%. The increase in the average loan size for refinances indicates that more borrowers with larger loan sizes are seeking to lower their monthly payments.

Realtor Todd Luong of REMAX DFW Associates in Frisco said his recent experience reflects meaningful improvement for buyers, even if affordability remains strained. Here in the Dallas real estate market that I serve, affordability remains a challenge, he says. However, there is a significant amount of data showing that buyer conditions have improved over the past year and that buyers are gaining affordability ground. This should eventually increase housing demand to some degree as we head into the busy spring buying season.

Mortgage delinquencies increased across all three major loan types Conventional, FHA, and VA in the last three months of the year, Marina Walsh, MBA's vice president of industry analysis, said in a statement. The most pronounced uptick was with FHA loans, which reached a delinquency rate of 11.52%, the highest level since the second quarter of 2021. While earlier-stage FHA delinquencies remained relatively flat compared to the previous quarter, later-stage, 90+ day delinquencies increased by 76 basis points.