More Charts, Fewer Words (Recapping This Month’s Mortgage Monitor From Black Knight)

Black Knight releases a robust collection of mortgage/housing info each month via its Mortgage Monitor report.  There are always more charts than we have time and room to post, but the charts are typically more interesting than whatever we have to say about them.  So this month, let’s try “more charts, fewer words.”

The report usually begins with delinquency stats.  This isn’t too interesting for the average originator, but if anyone asks you if the present housing market is like it was in 2008, you can confidently tell them it’s quite the opposite in terms of delinquencies.

“Prepayment” is also a term that doesn’t mean much to the average mortgage originator, realtor, or consumer, but it is slightly more interesting than delinquency stats.  Prepayment activity simply lets us know the reasons that loans are being paid off.  Refinances and sales are the biggest contributors, as you’d expect.  In this case, it’s interesting to see how much of the heavy lifting is now down by home sales (pretty obvious, considering high rates’ impact on refis).  Perhaps even more interesting is the ramp up in “curtailments” (extra principal paid down).

No surprises here.  Purchase rate locks are at multi-year lows, but not too far below 2019.

No surprises, for the most part, but some may be pleasantly surprised to see how steady the purchase market has been in terms of its contribution to overall origination numbers.

Which direction are rates going for those who refi?  Naturally, it’s hard for anyone’s rate to be lower than it was before in this market.  This chart simply confirms that the vast majority of refis are for reasons other than rate reduction.

The following chart is self-explanatory.  The blue line corresponds to the percentage of average income accounted for by the average mortgage payment.  It’s currently at 33.2% vs a long-term average of 24%.

Another look at affordability by metro area:

Moving on to home prices, we come to this month’s most interesting chart.  It shows annual price appreciation and truly embodies the age old point about “location.”  In short, every major market west of The Rockies is in negative territory year-over-year, while all but Austin, TX are up year-over-year east of The Rockies.

As for reasons, Black Knight notes that markets seeing the largest home price drops are both unaffordable (compared to their own long-run standards) and have smaller inventory deficits.