Fannie Mae reveals what’s happening with housing sentiment

Patrick Stoy, owner-broker of Wilmington-based, MC Mortgage Group, was asked whether the survey’s findings reflected his own experience with customers.

He said he felt some clients were taking on too much debt, given their financial constraints. Speaking to MPA, he said: “I’ve had people in my office that went and got under contract for properties and they’re obligating themselves to a $250,000 loan, even though the payment’s cheaper than what they’re paying in rent.

“It’s still a lot of a lot of debt to obligate themselves to, based on their current income being a single income household. It’s really almost impossible to buy a property these days, unless you’ve got multiple sources of income coming into a house.”

Fannie Mae’s latest survey results also confirm the views of Dr. Robert Dietz, chief economist and senior vice president for economics and housing policy for the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), who recently warned that a tightening monetary policy and higher interest rates would take a toll on housing affordability and price out younger families from the market.

“At the turn of the millennium, it was about 10% of young adults aged 25 to 34 who lived with their parents. Today that rate is higher than 20% and has doubled in the last two decades,” he told MPA, suggesting a lack of housing inventory as one of the reasons.