Housing market is overheated and prices are unsustainable, says housing report

BY EDWARD PINTO AND TOBIAS PETER

Key takeaways:

• Purchase rate lock volume remains strongly above last year’s. For the last couple weeks, volume has consistently been about 30%-80% higher.
• Driven by ultra-low mortgage rates and a limited supply, national HPA is unsustainable and far exceeds the levels before the pandemic. In recent weeks, the upward trend has plateaued at about 12% year-over-year.
• In recent months. the National Mortgage Risk Index (NMRI) data, which consist of a near complete census of agency loans, more closely tracks with the Optimal Blue data than MBA data. Before the pandemic, Optimal Blue rate lock and MBA purchase application data grew roughly in tandem. For the last few months, however, the Optimal Blue data has shown a substantially higher year-over-year growth than the MBA data.

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Edward J. Pinto is a resident fellow and Director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Housing Policy Center.  Tobias Peter is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.