Daily Dose of Real Estate

Daily Dose of Real Estate for June 30

If Redd Foxx were leading ALTA right now, he’d be clutching his chest going “this is the big one!” over FHFA Director Pulte’s title-insurance move. Pulte floated expanding Fannie’s title-waiver pilot to refinances and letting AI manage the risk, and the title trade group responded by noting that fraud and forgery drive about 40 percent of refi title-claim costs, with the average fraud-or-forgery claim topping $206,000. HUD pushed out five Mortgagee Letters in accordance with the Mortgage Executive Order and is branding the package as 14 changes and 150-plus streamlining actions, following the deregulation theme. Mortgage rates are barely registering a pulse ahead of Thursday’s jobs report. Warsh and other central bankers convene at the ECB’s annual policy forum in Sintra, Portugal, and the data quietly suggests the labor market firmed this spring.

The overall read on housing is consistent and underwhelming. AEI put May home-price appreciation at 1.4 percent nominal (down 2.7 percent adjusted for inflation), the second-lowest since 2013, Redfin shows new listings at a February low and a record share of May sellers handing out concessions even as the median price set a record, and a record 19.1 percent of house hunters are trying to leave their metro, mostly for the Sun Belt. The credit data is still fairly benign on the surface: ICE’s total delinquency rate – all first-lien mortgages 30 or more days past due but not yet in foreclosure, across conventional, FHA, and VA – rose 15 basis points to 3.50 percent – 90 day DQ fell to a five-month low. The trend worth watching is FHA, where ICE flags serious delinquencies and active foreclosures still climbing. Separately ATTOM has underwater rates creeping up in 44 states. Commercial is the genuinely ugly part of the page, with Brookfield dumping a Bethesda tower at 87 percent below its 2011 price and Elme pulling its liquidation payout estimate after a $280 million Alexandria apartment sale collapsed.

Let’s get you caught up and out the door in 3 minutes. Tim

Table of Contents

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Mortgage rates edged to another six-week low Monday, with the MND 30-year fixed index at 6.52%, the lowest since May 14th.
Treasury yields marked time ahead of Thursday’s jobs report, with the 10-year near 4.37% and the bond market closed Friday, July 3, for the holiday. CNBC
A heavy central-banking week features Fed Chair Warsh and the ECB’s Sintra forum, set against data that should clarify an apparent firming of the labor market this spring. Axios
Home-price growth keeps cooling: AEI’s index put May appreciation at 1.4% year over year, the second-lowest reading since 2013. aei
HUD trimmed FHA red tape through five Mortgagee Letters under Executive Order 14393, part of a 14-change package spanning origination through servicing. Consumer Finance MonitorHUD
FHFA’s Pulte signaled Fannie Mae is moving to expand its title-waiver pilot, especially on refinances, teeing up a fresh fight with the title industry. scotsmanguide
ICE said May delinquencies rose to 3.50% on a calendar quirk, with underlying performance still stable below pre-pandemic levels. theice
A record 19.1% of house hunters looked to leave their metro in Q1, with the Sun Belt the favored landing spot. redfin
Brookfield is accelerating its exit from D.C.-area office, having sold a Bethesda tower for roughly $20M against the $150M it paid in 2011.
Elme Communities’ liquidation hit a snag after a $280M Alexandria apartment sale collapsed, forcing the REIT to pull its payout estimates.

RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE MARKETS

Spring market exits quietly even as prices set records. Redfin’s weekly read shows new listings at their lowest since February and total supply down 0.4%, while pending sales slipped for a third straight week but held 4.2% above year-ago levels. The median sale price still hit a record $408,814, up 2.5% year over year, with nearly half of May sellers granting concessions, a record for the month. Redfin
Home-price growth cools to a post-2013 low. AEI’s National HPA Index put preliminary year-over-year appreciation at 1.4% in May, or -2.7% inflation-adjusted, up slightly from 1.2% in April but down from 2.4% a year earlier and the second-lowest reading since the series began in 2013. The Housing Center ties the reversion to elevated pandemic-era prices, higher rates since 2022, and a shrinking pool of qualified entry-level buyers, with the strongest cooling in the South and West. AEI Housing Center aeiaei
A record share of house hunters wants out of their metro. Roughly 19.1% of U.S. house hunters looked to relocate to a different part of the country in the first quarter, up from 18.9% a year earlier and the highest share in records dating back to 2021. Orlando and three other Florida metros led the destinations, while New York, Seattle, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. topped the list of places people most wanted to leave. Redfin redfinredfin

MORTGAGE MARKETS

Rates inch to another six-week low, with data ahead. The MND 30-year fixed index slipped 0.01% Monday to 6.52%, the lowest since May 14th, with the 15-year at 6.12%, FHA at 6.07%, VA at 6.09%, jumbo at 6.75%, and the 7/6 SOFR ARM at 6.22%. Monday’s calendar was empty, but big data lands each of the next three mornings, culminating in Thursday’s jobs report, before the bond market closes Friday for the July 4 holiday. Mortgage News Daily
Delinquencies tick up, but it’s a calendar quirk. ICE’s First Look pegged the May national delinquency rate at 3.50%, up 15 basis points, attributing the 4.5% month-over-month rise to a Sunday month-end that pushed payments into the next business day rather than to genuine deterioration. ICE’s Andy Walden flagged that the trend worth watching is continued growth in serious delinquencies and active foreclosures, particularly among FHA loans. ICE theicetheice
Home equity keeps thinning at the margins. ATTOM’s state-level read on its Q1 2026 data shows 43.3% of mortgaged homes were equity-rich, down from 44.6% the prior quarter and the lowest since the fourth quarter of 2021, while seriously underwater properties edged up to 3.2%, from 3% a quarter earlier and 2.8% a year ago. The underwater share rose in 44 states and D.C., with Louisiana highest at 11.8% and D.C. posting one of the largest annual jumps, from 3.8% to 5.3%. ATTOM AttoM Data + 2

REGULATORY & POLICY DEVELOPMENTS

HUD trims FHA red tape under EO 14393. In a series of five Mortgagee Letters, HUD modified FHA single-family policies to reduce regulatory burdens and promote affordability in accordance with Executive Order 14393, with changes spanning Limited 203(k) draw flexibility, rescission of the Form 92900-B homebuyer notice, and trial-payment-plan loss-mitigation rules. HUD framed the package as 14 announced changes and more than 150 FHA streamlining actions since the start of the administration; most provisions are effective immediately, with one required no later than September 21. Consumer Finance Monitor Consumer Finance Monitor + 2
Pulte signals a bigger Fannie title-waiver pilot. FHFA Director Bill Pulte said on X that Fannie Mae is working to expand its title-waiver pilot, especially on title insurance for refinancings, with announcements coming soon. The pilot, launched in November 2024 with Doma and expanded to Westcor in July 2025, lets certain low-risk refinances sell without a lender’s title policy by using AI to manage title risk; the title trade group ALTA pushed back, noting fraud and forgery account for roughly 40% of refinance title-claim costs, averaging more than $206,000 per claim. Scotsman Guide scotsmanguide + 2
Ginnie Mae advances its eNote securitization paperwork. HUD, on behalf of Ginnie Mae, published a 30-day Paperwork Reduction Act notice seeking OMB approval for the Digital Collateral Program, covering eIssuer and eCustodian applications tied to securitizing loans where the note is an eligible eNote. Comments are due July 29, 2026, under Docket No. FR-7107-N-12. Federal Register
Fannie posts a running policy-update digest. Fannie Mae’s “In Case You Missed It: Policy Updates” job aid summarizes recent Selling Guide, Servicing Guide, and related policy updates and clarifications, with links to related resources. It is a standing reference rather than a single announcement, handy for tracking guide changes between formal bulletins. Fannie Mae fanniemae

ECONOMIC NEWS

Yields mark time before Thursday’s jobs report. Treasury yields were little changed Monday, with the 10-year near 4.37%, the 2-year near 4.11%, and the 30-year near 4.86%, as investors looked ahead to key labor data and monitored a fragile U.S.-Iran pause. The bond market is closed Friday, July 3, ahead of Independence Day. CNBCCNBCCNBC
Warsh and Sintra anchor a central-banking week. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh and the ECB’s annual Sintra forum headline a heavy week for monetary policy, set against U.S. employment data that should offer greater visibility into an apparent firming of the labor market this spring. Thursday’s jobs report is the marquee U.S. release. AxiosAxios
Cheaper gas, mixed blessings. Falling gas prices are delivering immediate relief to drivers after months of disruption, but economists believe the sharp decline could present a host of longer-term economic issues. The move tracks the easing Middle East risk premium feeding through to energy and inflation. Newsweek Newsweek
A Redfin economist on Gen Z’s workaround. Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather argues Gen Z is coming of age in an economy where the traditional path to prosperity no longer works, and is building new ones rather than giving up. The essay frames stretched affordability and homeownership barriers as reshaping how the youngest adults pursue wealth-building. Redfin redfin

COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE MARKETS (INCLUDING MULTIFAMILY)

Brookfield keeps shrinking its D.C. office footprint. The firm recently sold a Bethesda tower for $20M, 87% below the $150M it paid in 2011, and has shed more than 2M SF of D.C. office since the pandemic, falling from 32 properties in 2019 to 20 today. It has now listed the last undeveloped parcel at The Yards, with analysts tying the retreat to soft fundamentals and a deliberate push into data centers. Bisnow
Collapsed Alexandria sale upends Elme’s wind-down. A Beitel Group subsidiary terminated its $280M agreement to buy the 1,222-unit Riverside Apartments, forcing Elme Communities to withdraw its liquidation payout estimate since proceeds were needed to repay a $251M Goldman Sachs loan. The termination came June 17 and was disclosed in a June 24 SEC filing; Elme has restarted marketing the property. CRE Daily

PODCAST HIGHLIGHTS

Chrisman Commentary – Daily Mortgage News: Robbie Chrisman’s Monday episode covers conventional-conforming changes, AI processing, and digital-closing tools, with the throughline that borrower adoption matters more than the tools themselves, alongside rising agency g-fees nudging lenders toward cash execution. Episode (June 29)
The TreppWire Podcast, Ep. 392 “Gigawatts & Green Shoots”: The Trepp team frames 2026 as one of “selective stabilization,” with a data-center deep dive spanning Meta’s $1B Tulsa AI facility, Maine’s new construction ban, and a record $5.7B junk bond for Google-linked data centers, plus a debt-universe read showing banks showing early signs of credit expansion. The TreppWire Podcast (Apple)