Daily Archives: April 7, 2020

U.S. Housing Markets Vulnerable To Coronavirus Impact Clustered In Northeast And Florida

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Nearly Half of the 50 Most Vulnerable Counties in New Jersey and Florida; Midwest and West Regions Less At Risk of Housing-Market Challenges

Irvine, CA – April 7, 2020 (PRNewswire) ATTOM Data Solutions, curator of the nation’s premier property database and first property data provider of Data-as-a-Service (DaaS), today released a Special Report spotlighting county-level housing markets around the United States that are more or less vulnerable to the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic. The report shows that the Northeast has the largest concentration of the most at-risk counties, with clusters in New Jersey and Florida, while the West and Midwest have the smallest.

The report reveals that housing markets in 14 of New Jersey’s 21 counties are among the 50 most vulnerable in the country to the economic impact of the Coronavirus. The top 50 also include four in New York, three in Connecticut and 10 from Florida, but only one in California, none in other West Coast states and only one in the Southwest.

Markets are considered more or less at risk based on the percentage of housing units receiving a foreclosure notice in Q4 2019, the percent of homes underwater (LTV 100 or greater) in Q4 2019, and the percentage of local wages required to pay for major home ownership expenses. Rankings are based on a combination of those three categories in 483 counties around the United States with sufficient data to analyze. Counties were ranked in each category, from lowest to highest, with the overall conclusions based on a combination of the three rankings. See below for the full methodology.

“It’s too early to tell how much effect the Coronavirus fallout will have on different housing markets around the country. But the impact is likely to be significant from region to region and county to county,” said Todd Teta, chief product officer with ATTOM Data Solutions. “What we’ve done is spotlight areas that appear to be more or less at risk based on several important factors. From that analysis, it looks like the Northeast is more at risk than other areas. As we head into the Spring home buying season, the next few months will reveal how severe the impact will be.” 

High-level findings from the analysis:

  • New Jersey and Florida have 24 of the 50 most vulnerable counties from among the 483 included in the report. The 14 counties in New Jersey include five in the New York City suburban area: Bergen, Essex, Passaic, Middlesex and Union counties. The 10 counties in Florida are concentrated in the northern and central sections of the state, including Flagler, Lake, Clay, Hernando and Osceola counties.

  • New York counties among the top 50 most at risk include Rockland County, in the New York City metropolitan area; Orange County, in the Poughkeepsie metro area; Rensselaer County, in the Albany metro area; and Ulster County, west of Poughkeepsie.

  • Other southern counties that are in the top 50 are spread across Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana and Virginia.

  • Among the counties analyzed, only two in the West and five in the Midwest (all in Illinois) rank among the top 50 most at risk from problems connected to the Coronavirus outbreak. The two western counties are Shasta County, CA, in the Redding metropolitan statistical area and Navajo County, AZ, northeast of Phoenix. The midwestern counties are McHenry County, IL; Kane County, IL; Will County, IL and Lake County, IL, all in the Chicago metro area; and Tazewell County, IL, in the Peoria metro area.

  • Counties in the top 50 with a population of at least 500,000 people include Bergen, Camden, Essex, Middlesex, Ocean, Passaic and Union counties in New Jersey; Lake, Will and Kane counties in Illinois; Delaware County, PA; Prince George’s County, MD; and Broward County, FL.

  • Texas has 10 of the 50 least vulnerable counties from among the 483 included in the report, followed by Wisconsin with seven and Colorado with five. The 10 counties in Texas include three in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area (Dallas, Collin and Tarrant counties) and two in the Midland-Odessa area (Ector and Midland counties).

  • Eighteen of the 50 least at-risk counties have a population of at least 500,000, led by Harris County (Houston), TX; Dallas County, TX; King County (Seattle), WA; Tarrant County (Fort Worth), TX; and Santa Clara County, CA, in the San Jose metro area.

  • Counties where median prices ranging from $160,000 to $300,000 comprise 36 of the top 50 counties most vulnerable to the impact of the Coronavirus.

  • Counties with median home prices below $160,000 or above $300,000 make up 14 of the top 50 most vulnerable to the impact of the Coronavirus. Those with median prices below $160,000 are among the most affordable in the nation to local wage earners, while those where median prices exceed $300,000 have some homes with the highest equity and smallest foreclosure rates.

Report methodology
The ATTOM Data Solutions Special Coronavirus Market Impact Report is based on ATTOM’s fourth-quarter 2019 residential foreclosure and underwater (LTV 100 or more) property reports and first-quarter 2020 home affordability report. Counties with sufficient data to analyze were ranked based on the percentage of properties with a foreclosure filing during the fourth quarter of 2019, the percentage of properties with outstanding mortgage balances that exceeded estimated market values in the fourth quarter of 2019, and the percentage of average local wages need to afford the major expenses of owning a median-priced home in the first quarter of 2020. Ranks then were added up to develop an overall ranking across all three categories. Equal weight was given to each category. Counties with the lowest composite ranks were considered most vulnerable to housing market problems. Those with the highest composite ranks were considered least vulnerable.

About ATTOM Data Solutions
ATTOM Data Solutions provides premium property data to power products that improve transparency, innovation, efficiency and disruption in a data-driven economy. ATTOM multi-sources property tax, deed, mortgage, foreclosure, environmental risk, natural hazard, and neighborhood data for more than 155 million U.S. residential and commercial properties covering 99 percent of the nation’s population. A rigorous data management process involving more than 20 steps validates, standardizes and enhances the data collected by ATTOM, assigning each property record with a persistent, unique ID — the ATTOM ID. The 9TB ATTOM Data Warehouse fuels innovation in many industries including mortgage, real estate, insurance, marketing, government and more through flexible data delivery solutions that include bulk file licenses, property data APIs, real estate market trends, marketing lists, match & append and introducing the first property data delivery solution, a cloud-based data platform that streamlines data management – Data-as-a-Service (DaaS).

Media Contact:
Christine Stricker
949.748.8428
christine.stricker@attomdata.com 

Data and Report Licensing:
949.502.8313
datareports@attomdata.com

More Americans Express Concern About Losing Their Job, Latest HPSI Results Show

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COVID-19 Concerns Lead to Steep Drop in Housing Sentiment

Washington, D.C. – April 7, 2020 (PRNewswire) The Fannie Mae (OTCQB: FNMA) Home Purchase Sentiment Index® (HPSI) fell 11.7 points to 80.8 in March, its lowest reading since December 2016. Five of the six HPSI components decreased month over month, including the percentage of Americans expressing concern about losing their job within the next 12 months. Consumers also reported that homebuying and home-selling conditions have worsened and took a more pessimistic view of home price growth. Year over year, the HPSI is down 9.0 points.

“In March, the HPSI dropped to its lowest level since December 2016, with Americans reporting greater concern about their job security than at any point in the last six years,” said Doug Duncan, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist. “Attitudes about the current home-selling environment deteriorated markedly, falling to their lowest level since January 2017. A survey record one-month drop in optimism about the direction of the economy appears to have weakened consumers’ views of both the current home-selling and homebuying environment, though the latter is likely buffered in part by low mortgage rates. When asked why it’s a bad time to buy or sell a home, approximately 7% of consumers offered COVID-19 as an unprompted response, one of the highest percentages of non-standard answers in the survey’s history. We expect these developments to weigh heavily on housing activity during the spring/summer homebuying season.”

Home Purchase Sentiment Index – Component Highlights

Fannie Mae’s Home Purchase Sentiment Index (HPSI) decreased in March by 11.7 points to 80.8. The HPSI is down 9.0 points compared to the same time last year. Read the full research report for additional information.

  • Good/Bad Time to Buy: The percentage of Americans who say it is a good time to buy decreased from 59% to 56%, while the percentage who say it is a bad time to buy increased from 32% to 36%. As a result, the net share of Americans who say it is a good time to buy decreased 7 percentage points.
     
  • Good/Bad Time to Sell: The percentage of Americans who say it is a good time to sell decreased from 67% to 52%, while the percentage who say it’s a bad time to sell increased from 22% to 36%. As a result, the net share of those who say it is a good time to sell decreased 29 percent points.
     
  • Home Price Expectations: The percentage of Americans who say home prices will go up in the next 12 months decreased this month from 47% to 39%, while the percentage who said home prices will go down increased from 8% to 22%. The share who think home prices will stay the same decreased from 38% to 32%. As a result, the net share of Americans who say home prices will go up decreased 22 percentage points.
     
  • Mortgage Rate Expectations: The percentage of Americans who say mortgage rates will go down in the next 12 months increased this month from 8% to 20%, while the percentage who expect mortgage rates to go up increased from 38% to 39%. The share who think mortgage rates will stay the same decreased from 46% to 33%. As a result, the net share of Americans who say mortgage rates will go down over the next 12 months increased 11 percentage points.
     
  • Job Concerns: The percentage of Americans who say they are not concerned about losing their job in the next 12 months decreased from 85% to 77%, while the percentage who say they are concerned increased from 13% to 23%. As a result, the net share of Americans who say they are not concerned about losing their job decreased 18 percentage points.
     
  • Household Income: The percentage of Americans who say their household income is significantly higher than it was 12 months ago decreased from 32% to 27%, while the percentage who say their household income is significantly lower remained the same at 11%. The percentage who say their household income is about the same increased from 56% to 61%. As a result, the net share of those who say their household income is significantly higher than it was 12 months ago decreased 5 percentage points.

About Fannie Mae’s Home Purchase Sentiment Index
The Home Purchase Sentiment Index (HPSI) distills information about consumers’ home purchase sentiment from Fannie Mae’s National Housing Survey® (NHS) into a single number. The HPSI reflects consumers’ current views and forward-looking expectations of housing market conditions and complements existing data sources to inform housing-related analysis and decision making. The HPSI is constructed from answers to six NHS questions that solicit consumers’ evaluations of housing market conditions and address topics that are related to their home purchase decisions. The questions ask consumers whether they think that it is a good or bad time to buy or to sell a house, what direction they expect home prices and mortgage interest rates to move, how concerned they are about losing their jobs, and whether their incomes are higher than they were a year earlier.

About Fannie Mae’s National Housing Survey
The most detailed consumer attitudinal survey of its kind, Fannie Mae’s National Housing Survey (NHS) polled approximately 1,000 Americans via live telephone interview to assess their attitudes toward owning and renting a home, home and rental price changes, homeownership distress, the economy, household finances, and overall consumer confidence. Homeowners and renters are asked more than 100 questions used to track attitudinal shifts, six of which are used to construct the HPSI (findings are compared with the same survey conducted monthly beginning June 2010). As cell phones have become common and many households no longer have landline phones, the NHS contacts 70 percent of respondents via their cell phones (as of January 2018). For more information, please see the Technical Notes. Fannie Mae conducts this survey and shares monthly and quarterly results so that we may help industry partners and market participants target our collective efforts to stabilize the housing market in the near-term, and provide support in the future. The March 2020 National Housing Survey was conducted between March 1, 2020 and March 22, 2020. Most of the data collection occurred during the first two weeks of this period. Interviews were conducted by PSB, in coordination with Fannie Mae.

Detailed HPSI & NHS Findings
For detailed findings from the March 2020 Home Purchase Sentiment Index and National Housing Survey, as well as a brief HPSI overview and detailed white paper, technical notes on the NHS methodology, and questions asked of respondents associated with each monthly indicator, please visit the Surveys page on fanniemae.com. Also available on the site are in-depth special topic studies, which provide a detailed assessment of combined data results from three monthly studies of NHS results.

To receive e-mail updates with other housing market research from Fannie Mae’s Economic & Strategic Research Group, please click here.

About Fannie Mae
Fannie Mae helps make the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage and affordable rental housing possible for millions of Americans. We partner with lenders to create housing opportunities for families across the country. We are driving positive changes in housing finance to make the home buying process easier, while reducing costs and risk. To learn more, visit:
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Fannie Mae Newsroom
https://www.fanniemae.com/news.

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Opinions, analyses, estimates, forecasts, and other views of Fannie Mae’s Economic & Strategic Research (ESR) Group included in these materials should not be construed as indicating Fannie Mae’s business prospects or expected results, are based on a number of assumptions, and are subject to change without notice. How this information affects Fannie Mae will depend on many factors. Although the ESR Group bases its opinions, analyses, estimates, forecasts, and other views on information it considers reliable, it does not guarantee that the information provided in these materials is accurate, current, or suitable for any particular purpose. Changes in the assumptions or the information underlying these views could produce materially different results. The analyses, opinions, estimates, forecasts, and other views published by the ESR Group represent the views of that group as of the date indicated and do not necessarily represent the views of Fannie Mae or its management.