LendingHome Week in Review | February 17, 2017
LendingHome’s Week in Review is here to provide you news that you might have missed this week.
There’s been a lot of speculation about the direction the U.S. housing market is heading the past couple months. These 3 articles discuss privately-owned housing starts, fix-and-flip loan bundling into mortgage bonds, and how Millennials are now the dominant force in housing.

Photo Credit: Housingwire
Housing starts begin year slightly lower
According to Housingwire, housing starts for privately-owned housing “decreased 2.6% month-over-month to 1.25 million in January.” The original estimate for starts was “1.28 million.”
Even with this slow start, Ralph McLaughlin from Trulia stated that the numbers aren’t “statistically significant” because of an increase in building permits.

Photo Cred: Inman
Fix-and-flip mortgage bonds: Wall Street’s new housing bet to boost home flippers
Online lenders lead the trend of bundling fix-and-flip loans into mortgage bonds “also known as mortgage-backed securities.”
“The bonds build on a recent transformation in financing for home flippers. Home flippers previously could only obtain credit from “hard-money lenders,” who were typically local and used “country club capital” to fund loans.”

Photo Credit: AlphaGamma
How Millennials are dominating the housing market
Zillow reports that in the housing market, Millennials consists of about 42% of the demand and inquiries. This segmentation also are the most connected using Internet searches and apps when searching for new homes.
With the increased experience with technology, millennials are more likely to conduct “extensive due diligence” during their housing search.
Header Photo Credit: Steve Borbrick