May 23rd, 2019

We’ve got some positive outlooks coming out of the Genworth MI’s First-Time Homebuyer Market Report: according to Genworth’s chief economist Tian Liu, the market for first-time buyers is improving, with 38% of single-family home sales and 57% of purchase mortgages originated in Q1 being attributed to first-timers. The main reason for this is most likely due to rates being down from 2018 levels, improving housing affordability for many consumers. According to Liu, "First-time homebuyers continue to represent a large part of the activity in the housing market despite the slowdown in the overall market. The first-time homebuyer market experienced further slowdowns due to worsening affordability from the past three years. However, affordability began to improve, and further decreases in interest rates in Q1 suggest that affordability will have more room to improve, significantly reducing the cause of the original slowdown.”