The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has been generating a fair amount of media buzz the last couple months, but unfortunately, little has been positive. Beginning with a University of Pennsylvania study that severely questioned the agency’s finances going forward, there have been a number of accounts profiling the sudden deficiencies in the FHA’s solvency.

The automated valuation model (AVM) is a fast, convenient way for mortgage lenders to value a property, one that utilizes mathematical models and databases of information.
Though quick and easy, Gina Pogol of HSH documents several of AVM’s shortcomings in a recent article, some of which can prove detrimental to homeowners.

The Appraisal Institute (AI) ruffled many feathers last week by taking a “Don’t Shoot the Messenger” stance in regards to recent controversies in home valuations, but recent reports suggest that the institute may be amending its stance on how its members operate.

Housing was largely absent from President Obama’s 2012 State of the Union Address, but he did mention a potentially game-changing proposal – a mass refinancing plan for homeowners that are current on their mortgages that, according to the President, could save them roughly $3,000 a year on their mortgages.

After reaching a 19-month high in November, the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) Pending Home Sales Index declined by 3.5 percent in December, though it did retain the year-over-year gains that defined much of housing data in 2011.
A forward-looking indicator based on contract signings, the Index fell from 100.1 in November to 96.6 in December. The Index is 5.6 percent higher than in December 2010, when it was 91.5.

Membership in the National Association of Realtors (NAR) declined for the third straight month in December, closing out a 2011 that marks the fifth straight year of annual declines for the influential association.
According to the latest data from NAR, there were 1,009,940 members at the end of 2011, a decline of 5.3 percent from 2010′s ending membership total of 1,066,658, though December’s totals did represent a slight increase from the 2011 low in March of 1,003,462.

The Federal Housing Finance Administration and its Acting Director, Edward DeMarco, have been receiving some considerable heat from analysts and members of Congress for their refusal to consider principal write downs for homeowners with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac distressed mortgages.
In its defense (and response to a Congressional threat to subpoena), the agency has released the findings of a 2010 study on principal write downs that concluded such a program would cost Fannie and Freddie more than $100 billion; and with both GSEs under public receivership, those funds would be collected …

Quite a bit has been written about the reactionary lending policies that private mortgage originators began following after the market collapse in 2008, and the common narrative has been that such credit restrictions negatively impact housing.
We cover lending constantly on these pages (including from the contrarian viewpoint), but one perspective that we have yet to follow is that of the Federal Reserve, which threw its hat in the analytics game a couple weeks back with a widely-read white paper on housing that included, among other things, perspectives on home lending.