August 6th, 2019

Today brings some good news for your borrowers: home affordability is currently at an 18-month high due to lower rates and decelerating home prices, according to Black Knight’s Mortgage Monitor Report. The average-priced home requires 21.3% of the median household income compared to 23.3% from last November, when rates had reached a 7-year high. The report hints that we may be finding ourselves in a “sweet spot” of sorts, and it’s a time when loan officers need to be highly proactive in generating new, repeat, and referral business. Ben Graboske, Black Knight’s Data and Analytics President, talked about some of the potential benefits to first-time home buyers in the environment, saying that they “could effectively buy $45,000 ‘more house’ while still keeping their payments the same as they would have been last fall. As affordability pressures have eased, it also appears to be putting the brakes on the home price deceleration we’ve been tracking since February 2018. After 15 consecutive monthly declines, the national home price growth rate for June stayed level from May at 3.78%.”

Today, be sure to get in contact with your hot leads, mine your database for high-potential repeat customers, contact recent borrowers for referrals, and do your best to take advantage of the opportunities presenting themselves.