National Real Estate Sales Increase Overall

The National Association of Realtors just announced that home sales rose a respectable 2.9% in the month of April from March. The increase can be attributed to the increased volume of sales in the “lower-end” market. I touched upon this in my last BLOG posting. The market for the “high-end” properties has been particularly slow. With the continued tightening of mortgage qualification standards, it is getting difficult to obtain “jumbo loans.” Jumbo loans are defined as those mortgages above $730,000. These loans accounted for over 17% of the mortgage market in 2007. Now they account for only 5%. Another contributing factor is that Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac cannot purchase jumbo loans. The chief economist at NAR, Lawrence Yun, has lobbied for the Federal Reserve to buy jumbo loans to restore liquidity in this segment of the market as well.