The Latest Breaking News from Freddie Mac

Three Florida cities led the nation in rent increases for the latest 12 months. Vacancies are inching higher nationally.

The week in housing was one of great challenges, with mortgage rates cracking the 5% level while homeowners faced an uptick in property taxes and state attorneys general demanded that mortgage servicers drop their convenience fees charged to borrowers.

Long-term U.S. mortgage rates continued to climb this week as the key 30-year loan rate reached 5% for the first time in more than a decade amid persistent high inflation

It's going to be hard for first-time buyers to afford a house.

Mortgage rates are continuing their upward motion while potential homebuyers and sellers face a shifting housing market and the affordable housing sector welcomes a well-known new participant.

A few years after risky mortgages and related investments led to a global financial collapse, the Federal Reserve put out a handbook to help consumers make smarter choices about their home loan options. The focus was on adjustable-rate mortgages, whose exotic variants were among the prime culprits in the meltdown.

The 30-year fixed mortgage rate jumped to a three year high of 4.67% in the week ended March 31.

Compared to other sectors of the wider economy, the housing and mortgage industries have traditionally been slower to embrace cutting-edge technologies and digital solutions. A myriad of reasons explain this pokey response to evolving change, ranging from the sector’s conservative risk tolerance to a lack of standardization in many evolving technologies.

The latest data news from the housing market included new records being achieved in single-family home and condominium sales, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage crashing through the 4.5% level, and a warning from a prominent industry economist on the potential for a recession created by the Federal Reserve.

This week's housing and mortgage industry data is something of a seesaw ride, with mortgage rates, millennial homebuying and the mortgage delinquency rate rising while mortgage applications and a major builder's output did not. 

In the wake of the Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside, Florida last year, the two federally chartered agencies that back most residential mortgages in the country, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, have instituted new rules requiring lenders to verify the condition of condominium buildings before approving loans.