Daily Dose of Real Estate

Daily Dose of Real Estate for June 29 (my bday!)

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act is expected to officially reach POTUS’ desk by tomorrow, starting a procedural shot clock under which the bill becomes law even without Trump’s signature after 10 days, unless he vetoes it. It touches supply, zoning, institutional investors, and community banking, while pointedly doing nothing about rates or prices, the only two variables borrowers actually feel. Mortgage rates, the second-closest thing to good news this edition offers, sit just behind it – and everything underneath them points the other way. Core services inflation is reheating, May PCE printed a three-year-high 4.1%, and a Warsh-led Fed has pulled its 2026 cut and started floating a hike. The new debate is whether the Fed’s balance sheet matters more to mortgage rates than the dot plot, which tells you how little the dot plot is worth right now.

Voters want federal help on affordability across party lines, AEI’s Anaheim case study shows by-right zoning can deliver naturally affordable units, and HUD keeps trimming FHA red tape. The supply diagnosis is now broadly agreed upon; whether any of it produces a home someone can afford this decade remains an open question. Credit data confirms the strain where you’d expect it: FHFA and TransUnion both flag a deteriorating FHA book, with serious delinquency above 6% and roughly one in eighteen FHA borrowers now two months behind. Zillow calls the recovery paused, Morgan Stanley calls the affordability reset permanent, and neither is wrong.

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Table of Contents

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act cleared Congress and is actually headed to the President – no, really this time. It is the largest housing-construction bill since 1990, and it touches nearly everything except the two things borrowers actually feel: rates and prices (summary details at the end of the newsletter).
Mortgage rates eased to their lowest since mid-May, with Mortgage News Daily’s 30-year fixed at 6.53% to close last week with little movement but heading in the right direction for once.
The rate conversation worth having is not the dot plot. It is the Fed’s balance sheet and Fannie/Freddie bond buying, which brokers argue may move mortgage rates more than anything Warsh does to the benchmark – think depth of UST and MBS buyers and mortgage spreads.
Inflation is reheating exactly where the Fed cannot look through it: core services PCE surged and the six-month core PCE hit 4.1%, a three-year high, before energy is even counted.
Tale of two government programs – FHFA’s Q1 report shows refinances up and Enterprise delinquencies still low at 0.81% (60+), as FHA serious delinquency sits at 6.10%.
That FHA stress is not a one-report fluke: TransUnion’s May data independently confirms it, with roughly 1 in 18 FHA borrowers now at least two months behind on their mortgage, up from about 1 in 29 a year earlier, a sign the government-loan book is deteriorating fast, not stabilizing.
Zillow says the recovery is back on pause, with typical values up just 0.8% year over year and sales down 2.9%.
The politics of the supply fix are not ambiguous: a Redfin survey finds large majorities of both parties want government help on affordability, and an AEI case study of Anaheim shows that simply letting builders build, approving apartments automatically rather than case-by-case, produced thousands of moderately priced homes on a sliver of land.
HUD rolled out 14 FHA policy changes, from looser rehab-loan rules to streamlined appraisal reviews, executed through five Mortgagee Letters aimed at cutting origination and servicing costs, while Morgan Stanley calls the affordability reset permanent.

RESIDENTIAL NEWS

Voters want the help, across the aisle. A Redfin survey finds 79% of Americans back first-time-buyer tax breaks (85% of Democrats, 77% of Republicans), 76% want caps on rent increases, and 74% support down-payment assistance; Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather notes the ROAD to Housing Act shows policy can move affordability without big spending. Redfin, Jun 26
Zillow: the recovery is back on pause. The May market report pegs the typical U.S. home value at $368,720 (up just 0.8% year over year), typical rent at $1,951 (up 2.0%), and sales at 341,929 (down 2.9% year over year), with the typical mortgage payment at $1,861. Zillow Research, May 2026 Market Report
Morgan Stanley calls the housing “reset” permanent. The bank argues affordability will not snap back to pre-2022 norms, pencils in roughly 2% price growth for 2026, and expects a growing share of priced-out buyers to stay renters for longer. TheStreet, Jun 26
Chrisman spotlights a demand-side affordability fix. Saturday’s commentary hands the mic to NatEquity CEO Peter Mazonas, who pitches HouseMoney, a tax-free savings vehicle letting workers set aside up to 12% of pay a year and tap it within five years for a down payment without raiding their 401(k). His pitch: the ROAD Act covers supply and regulatory relief while demand gets nothing, so pairing the plan with a low-down-payment agency loan would let buyers leverage a 90% loan into roughly 3% annual price appreciation. Rob Chrisman, Jun 27

MORTGAGE NEWS

Rates at a six-week low. Mortgage News Daily put the 30-year fixed at 6.53% on Friday, the lowest since May 14, as softer energy prices pulled yields down. Mortgage News Daily
Higher-for-longer hardens. BofA now sees no cuts until 2028 and flags the risk of hikes, while First American’s Odeta Kushi reiterates that rates are likely to stay elevated, leaving the primary-secondary spread doing the heavy lifting. MPA, Jun 26
The balance sheet may matter more than the dot plot. Polunsky Beitel Green’s Marty Green argues the pace of the Fed’s MBS runoff, plus Fannie and Freddie bond buying that quietly muted the Middle East rate spike, could move mortgages more than the benchmark, with rates likely camped in the 6.25% to 6.5% range and December the earliest plausible cut. MPA, Jun 25
TransUnion: the FHA book is where the cracks are. May’s Credit Industry Snapshot shows overall mortgage 30+ and 90+ consumer delinquency ticking down while 60+ rose to 1.53%, but the real story is FHA, where account-level 60+ delinquency jumped to 5.51% from 3.43% a year ago and serious (90+, excluding foreclosure) hit 4.17% versus 2.05%. Average balance per account edged up to $237,036. (TransUnion, May 2026 Credit Industry Snapshot)

REGULATORY AND POLICY NEWS

ROAD to Housing heads to the President, then waits. The bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act passed both chambers and went to the White House, where the signing was abruptly delayed; Speaker Johnson maintains it becomes law. Speaker Johnson announced Sunday that he will send the housing bill to the White House on Monday – that starts the 10 day procedural clock where it will pass automatically unless vetoed by POTUS. Bill details at the end of the newsletter. The Hill, Jun 28
AEI’s Anaheim case study for the supply crowd. Tobias Peter and Arthur Gailes document how Anaheim’s by-right, ministerial Platinum Triangle overlay (no CEQA review, no inclusionary mandate) produced roughly 4,500 naturally affordable homes on about 2% of the city’s land, accounting for 26% of all housing built there since 2000. AEI Housing Center
HUD trims FHA red tape. HUD announced 14 FHA Single Family policy changes spanning origination, servicing, and quality control, executed through five Mortgagee Letters (2026-06 to 2026-10), including looser Limited 203(k) draw rules and streamlined appraisal field reviews. It is the latest in 150-plus FHA streamlining actions under this administration. Consumer Finance Monitor, Jun 26
FHFA’s Q1 scorecard: refis up, Enterprise credit clean, FHA not. The Enterprises logged 58,317 foreclosure-prevention actions and saw 60+ delinquency fall to 0.81% as the Q1 average 30-year slipped to 6.11%, lifting refi volume; serious delinquency was 0.59% for the Enterprises versus 6.10% for FHA and 2.61% for VA. Foreclosure starts fell 2.8% while completed foreclosure sales rose 6.6%. FHFA, Jun 25

ECONOMIC NEWS

Sentiment stuck near record lows. The University of Michigan’s final June consumer sentiment read came in at 49.5, little changed from the preliminary print and still deeply depressed by historical standards. Households remain fixated on the cost of living and elevated inflation expectations, which continue to weigh on spending intentions even with the labor market holding up. University of Michigan, Jun 26
Kashkari joins the hawkish drift. The Minneapolis Fed’s Neel Kashkari now pencils in just one rate cut this year, a notable step back from the more dovish path markets had been pricing. Treasury yields softened on the news, with the 2-year slipping as easing energy prices took some of the near-term inflation pressure off. CNBC, Jun 26
PCE prints a three-year high. The headline reading landed at a 4.1% pace, the hottest in three years and more than double the Fed’s 2% target. The print reinforces the case that rate cuts are off the table near-term and keeps upward pressure on the mortgage-rate outlook. TheStreet, Jun 26
The part the Fed can’t wave away. Wolf Richter notes core services PCE, more than 60% of consumer spending, jumped at a 5.6% annualized clip in May and is no longer housing-driven, pushing six-month core PCE to a three-year-high 4.1%; he flags AI data-center demand surging regulated electricity prices and AI-driven semiconductor costs lifting equipment prices as structural, not transitory. Wolf Street, Jun 25
IMF puts a price on unaffordability. A new working paper (Hallaert and Vassileva, WP/26/124) uses double machine learning to quantify the consequences of housing unaffordability across the EU from 2010 to 2024, finding a large negative impact on housing adequacy, poverty, and health, and a smaller drag on fertility and labor-force participation. It is EU-focused, but the channels map cleanly onto the U.S. debate. IMF, Jun 2026

PODCAST HIGHLIGHTS

HousingWire Daily: a good week for housing, just not for builders. Editor in Chief Sarah Wheeler and Lead Analyst Logan Mohtashami break down why the week’s data was constructive for demand even as supply overhang keeps new construction from ramping, with a Top 5 spanning Fannie’s title-pilot expansion, FHFA’s chattel-loan push, and Trump’s delayed ROAD to Housing signing. HousingWire Daily, Jun 26
No Surrender, Ep 7 (part 1): the housing bill as midterm theater. Greg Sher, Erin Dee, and Coby Hakalir tear into the ROAD to Housing Act, with Hakalir calling it “pageantry for the midterm elections” and Sher noting the bill was never formally presented to the President, so the 10-day clock has not started and Trump can still tie it to a voter-ID push. Dee credits MBA lobbying for the few real wins, FHA appraisals opened to licensed appraisers, manufactured-home chassis relief, and a small-dollar FHA pilot, but the panel agrees the meaningful fixes belong at the state and local level. No Surrender, Jun 25
No Surrender, Ep 7 (part 2): why rates ignore cheaper oil, and builders crack. Leaning on a Logan Mohtashami clip, the panel explains why the 10-year has held near 4.4% even as oil slid for three weeks, with Hakalir crediting a bond market that now discounts Trump’s brinkmanship and trades the data itself absent Warsh’s forward guidance. They then hit Fitch’s downgrade of US homebuilders to “deteriorating,” with builder confidence stuck at 35 for a 14th straight month below 40 and most builders still cutting prices or piling on incentives. No Surrender, Jun 25
Thoughts on the Market: the first-time-buyer math gets harder. James Egan and Sarah Wolfe walk through why the path to first ownership keeps steepening, with monthly payments roughly doubled for a median home and rising credit-score and balance bars pushing buyers older and into cheaper ZIP codes. Morgan Stanley, Jun 23

WHAT’S ACTUALLY IN THE 21st CENTURY ROAD TO HOUSING ACT

A standalone explainer on the package headed to the President’s desk. It folds together more than 45 measures from over 60 introduced bills, and is being called the most significant housing-construction legislation since 1990.

Supply and local zoning. The bill leans on incentives rather than mandates, steering more federal dollars to jurisdictions that build and away from those that don’t, and directs HUD to write guidelines for single-stairway (“point-access block”) buildings of up to six stories, which lets builders fit more units onto smaller infill lots. Bipartisan Policy Center
Institutional investors. It restricts certain large investors from buying up single-family homes, the provision Senator Warren framed as Congress telling private equity “enough.” More a marker than a market-mover, but a first federal line on the issue. Axios
Homeownership access and program reform. The package creates homeownership pilots, incentivizes renovation of aging homes, includes small-dollar mortgage provisions, and adds manufactured-housing and veterans-housing measures, plus clearer HUD authority over housing-counseling agencies. Bipartisan Policy Center
Community banking. The asset threshold for the longer 18-month exam cycle rises from $3 billion to $6 billion, well-run federal credit unions may meet as few as six times a year, and Treasury and the regulators are directed to support de novo formation of community banks, credit unions, and minority depository institutions. Bipartisan Policy Center
What it pointedly does not touch. No new appropriations are authorized, and nothing in it addresses 6.5% mortgage rates or five years of accumulated price gains. As its sponsors concede, Congress does not control the rate environment. Axios