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MCLEAN, VA- Freddie Mac (OTCQB: FMCC) released today its U.S. Economic and Housing Market Outlook for January showing that four of the key housing indicators are all moving in the right direction, which bodes well for an ongoing recovery. A short preview video, and the complete January 2014 U.S. Economic and Housing Market Outlook are available here.

Outlook Highlights and First Quarter Projections
December’s unemployment rate of 6.7 percent remains stubbornly high. It may take another two years until labor market gets back to full employment.

Mortgage delinquency rates at 5.88 percent have been nearly cut in half from their peak, but they are still very high from their long term normal average of approximately 2 percent.

From 1999-2006, mortgage payments on a hypothetical 30-year fixed-rate mortgage would have increased by 50 percent more than income growth. Currently, payment-to-income ratios are only 60 percent of the level we had in 1999 suggesting room for continued house price growth.

When measured against the single-family housing stock, historically home sales have averaged about 6 percent of the stock at an annual rate. During the housing boom, home sales increased up to about 9 and then plummeted down to around 4 percent. With home sales at a 5.8 million pace in 2014 this rate should rise up to 5.7% for 2014.

Quote attributed to Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac vice president and chief economist. “As we start 2014, the housing recovery continues its steady pace. House-price gains will likely moderate from last year’s pace but rise about 5 percent in national indexes. Home sales, as well as other key indicators, continue to trend in the right direction, although in some markets we are seeing the sales recovery strengthen while many others remain weak.”

Freddie Mac was established by Congress in 1970 to provide liquidity, stability and affordability to the nation’s residential mortgage markets. Freddie Mac supports communities across the nation by providing mortgage capital to lenders. Today Freddie Mac is making home possible for one in four home borrowers and is one of the largest sources of financing for multifamily housing.

This Press Release is courtesy of www.freddiemac.com

New York, NY – Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) today announced that Time Warner has sold the 1.1 million square feet of office space it owns in Time Warner Center for $1.3 billion to a venture of Related Companies, an entity owned by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) and GIC. The venture will lease office space back to Time Warner until early 2019. Additionally, Time Warner, Related Companies and Oxford Properties Group announced that Time Warner intends to relocate the Company’s corporate headquarters and its New York City-based employees to Hudson Yards on the west side of Manhattan, and has accordingly made an initial financial commitment.

Time Warner Chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes said, “The sale of our office space in Time Warner Center to Related Companies and its partners is an important step toward moving our New York City-based employees into a dynamic new complex that will foster even more collaboration, creativity, and efficiency across our businesses. We began a process two years ago to evaluate our commercial real estate footprint within the New York Metropolitan area, where we currently own and lease space in seven buildings. By consolidating our space to Hudson Yards, New York’s next great neighborhood, we will be able to reallocate substantial savings to our primary business of creating and sharing great storytelling in television, film, and journalism with audiences around the world.”

Eastdil Secured represented Time Warner on the sale of its office space at Time Warner Center. Studley is representing Time Warner and CBRE is representing Related and Oxford with respect to Time Warner’s planned acquisition of space in Hudson Yards for its new corporate headquarters.

Time Warner Center
Related Companies led the development of Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle and when the 2.8 million square foot Time Warner Center opened in 2004, it became the first vertical, mixed-use facility of its kind in New York City. The Shops at Columbus Circle and The Restaurant and Bar Collection consist of shopping, dining and entertainment programming totaling 350,000 square feet of leasable space. Together with Jazz at Lincoln Center’s three performance halls, this world-class destination provides New York’s West Side with 500,000 square feet of dynamic restaurant, retail and entertainment uses. The complex includes Time Warner Inc.’s headquarters, One Central Park condominiums, The Residences at the Mandarin Oriental, and the Mandarin Oriental five-star luxury hotel. Recognized as the catalyst to transform a long suffering Columbus Circle into a thriving epicenter of Manhattan, Time Warner Center stands as the nucleus of this historic neighborhood.

Related Companies Chairman Stephen M. Ross said, “We are pleased to be partnering with ADIA and GIC in the acquisition of the office space Time Warner has occupied since 2004. Since opening, Time Warner Center has become one of the most celebrated and successful mixed-use developments–offering dynamic retail, hotel and cultural amenities and first-class office space. Time Warner has been a great steward for what will inevitably be some of the most sought after commercial office space in the City.”

Regional Head of Americas at GIC Real Estate Tia Miyamoto said, “Time Warner Center is one of the premier mixed-use projects in the country. We see significant upside in leasing the high quality office space following Time Warner Inc.’s planned relocation to 30 Hudson Yards. We believe strong demand for this first-rate office property will translate into a stable income stream which suits GIC as a long-term investor.”

With Time Warner’s planned move to Hudson Yards, Related will offer space in one of the top office buildings in New York City to outside tenants for the first time. The state-of-the-art space features two dedicated office lobbies, ceiling heights ranging from over 13 feet to 27 feet, flexible and efficient floor plans, unique terraces and panoramic views of Central Park.

30 Hudson Yards
Time Warner expects to acquire more than one million square feet of the available commercial space in 30 Hudson Yards located at the southwest corner of 10th Avenue and 33rd Street in Hudson Yards. Approximately 5,000 employees from Time Warner’s corporate operations and its HBO, Turner Broadcasting, and Warner Bros. businesses will occupy the new office space in 30 Hudson Yards at the end of 2018. The parties have signed an initial agreement for the development of 30 Hudson Yards, and all parties expect to complete final building development documents by the first half of 2014.

Ross added, “Time Warner has always been a visionary media company and Time Warner, led by Jeff Bewkes, is again showcasing its innovative and pioneering spirit in anchoring 30 Hudson Yards. Hudson Yards will be home to some of the most iconic brands in business and we are thrilled at the prospect of once again working with Time Warner to not only build a best-in-class headquarters site but also a community.”

Oxford Chief Executive Officer Blake Hutcheson said, “Time Warner has shown incredible vision not only in its core business of storytelling, but also in its commitment to establishing a collaborative and creative space,” said Hutcheson. “We are very excited to partner with Time Warner alongside Related, and to deliver a business community in which Time Warner will simply thrive.”

The LEED Gold 80-story 30 Hudson Yards, designed by acclaimed global architects Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF), will stand 1,227 feet tall and offer state-of-the-art commercial office space for Time Warner’s 5,000 employees, including screening rooms, studio space and dedicated corporate amenity spaces. The 2.6 million square foot building will feature panoramic views of the city skyline and Hudson River, what will be the city’s highest outdoor observation deck and a dramatic ground floor lobby with entrances off of Tenth Avenue and Hudson Boulevard, directly adjacent to the entrance to the new No. 7 subway extension. Upon completion, 30 Hudson Yards will be the fourth tallest building in New York City. Construction of the 10-acre platform that will serve as the foundation of 30 Hudson Yards, the remaining towers in the eastern rail yard and the public space is expected to commence in upcoming weeks. The neighboring 10 Hudson Yards will be home to Coach Inc., L’Oreal USA, SAP and Fairway Market.

Hudson Yards
Hudson Yards is largest private real estate development in U.S. history and the largest development in New York City since Rockefeller Center. It is anticipated that more than 24 million people will visit Hudson Yards every year. The site will include 17 million square feet of commercial and residential space, more than 100 shops and restaurants, approximately 5,000 residences, a unique cultural space, 14-acres of public open space, a new 750-seat public school and a 150-room luxury hotel – all offering unparalleled amenities for residents, employees and guests. The development of Hudson Yards will create more than 23,000 construction jobs, and when completed in 2024, more than 65,000 people a day will either work, visit or live in Hudson Yards. Hudson Yards is also one of the most accessible sites in the region with connections to commuter rail, the subway system, the West Side Highway, the Lincoln Tunnel and ferries along the Hudson River. Grand Central Terminal will be only 6 minutes away by subway, and Penn Station, the nation’s busiest train station, is a short walk away.

This Press Release is courtesy of www.timewarner.com

WASHINGTON – Today, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) published revised guidelines for lenders when they manually underwrite mortgage loan applications of borrowers applying for FHA-insured mortgages. This change will improve a lender’s ability to objectively consider a borrower’s risk and reduce additional credit requirements or ‘overlays’ that exceed FHA’s own lending standards. Read FHA’s revised manual underwriting standards.

New manual underwriting requirements announced today are intended to encourage lenders to use a defined set of objective standards and ‘compensating factors’ in order to make responsible, risk-based underwriting decisions. In addition, FHA’s manual underwriting guidance addresses loan characteristics such as high debt-to-income ratios and a lack of financial reserves that can result in high rates of default and foreclosure.

“We want to provide revised guidance for our lenders so that they are confident in offering affordable mortgage loans to responsible borrowers under a reasonable set of guiding principles,” said FHA Commissioner Carol Galante. “We hope to bring more certainty to the market by helping lenders apply a set of consistent underwriting standards.”

Currently, most FHA-insured loans are underwritten through automated underwriting systems that score applications using FHA’s TOTAL (Technology Open to Approved Lenders) Mortgage Scorecard. The TOTAL Mortgage Scorecard evaluates borrowers based on credit scores and other loan factors. When TOTAL delivers a Refer scoring recommendation or when borrowers were not scored because they do not have credit scores, lenders are required to manually underwrite the borrower. Specific policy revisions included in this regulation are reserve requirements for all manually underwritten borrowers, establishing maximum qualifying ratios based on credit score and compensating factors; and providing a revised list of acceptable compensating factors with objective documentation requirements for assessing these factors.

This Press Release is courtesy of US Department of Housing & Urban Development

WASHINGTON – U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, today unveiled the Location Affordability Portal (LAP), a cost calculation tool that allows users to estimate housing and transportation costs for neighborhoods across the country. The LAP will help consumers and communities better understand the combined costs of housing and transportation associated with living in a specific region, street, or neighborhood and make better-informed decisions about where to live, work, and invest.

“Many consumers make the mistake of thinking they can afford to live in a certain neighborhood or region just because they can afford the rent or mortgage payment. Housing affordability encompasses much more than that,” said HUD Secretary Donovan. “The combined cost of housing and transportation consumes close to half of a working family’s monthly budget, and the LAP will help to better inform consumers, help them save money, and provide them with a broader perspective of their housing and transportation options.”

“Transportation and housing are usually the two biggest expenses a family faces,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “Now, hardworking families all across the country can make better informed decisions about where to live and work, including how their different transportation options may impact those choices.”

The LAP hosts two cutting-edge data tools: the Location Affordability Index (LAI) and My Transportation Cost Calculator (MTCC). The map-based LAI is a database of predicted annual housing and transportation costs for a particular area. The LAI includes diverse household profiles—which vary by income, size, and number of commuters—and shows the affordability landscape for each one across an entire region.It was designed to help renters and homeowners, as well as planners, policymakers, developers, and researchers, get a more complete understanding of the costs of living in a location given the differences between households, neighborhoods, and regions, all of which impact affordability. The data covers 94% of the U.S. population.

The Cost Calculator, a companion to the LAI, allows users to customize data for their own household and potential residential locations. Users enter basic information about their income, housing, cars, and travel patterns. The customized estimates give a better understanding of transportation costs, how much they differ in other locations, and how much they are impacted by individual choices, allowing users to make more informed decisions about where to live and work.

The LAI was developed with the input of real-estate industry professionals, academics, and expert staff from HUD and DOT, and uses statistical models that were developed from various sources that capture key neighborhood characteristics: population density, transit and job access, average number of commuters and distance of commutes, average household income and size, median selected monthly owner costs (SMOC), and median gross rent. The LAI also considers: car ownership, annual vehicle miles traveled (VMT), percent of commuters using transit, average selected monthly ownership costs, and average gross rent. This data is then used to calculate total housing and transportation costs.

Most of the model uses data that describe features of a neighborhood that are the same regardless of who lives there. To show how affordable neighborhoods across a region are for different types of households, the LAI presents data in terms of eight different household types–each characterized by the number of family members, household income and number of commuters–that represent a broad range of U.S. families. Descriptions of these household types, as well as the complete methodology used to create the Index, are available on the LAP.

“I’ve witnessed the evolution of these tools over time and I’m impressed by the attention to detail and statistical sophistication,” said Tom Sanchez, Virginia Tech professor and Editor of the academic journal Housing Policy Debate. “Household location decisions are in fact a function of housing costs and transportation costs together. Better information should lead to better decisions that effect not only particular households, but also communities and regions.”

HUD and DOT have analyzed the LAI data to better understand how housing and transportation costs vary between neighborhoods and across regions, and how land use, infrastructure investment, neighborhood characteristics, and demographic factors ultimately impact household budgets.

The core finding of the LAI is that the way communities are built and connected to one another has significant impacts on how much resident households spend on transportation. At the neighborhood level, factors like the density of residential development, access to transit and jobs, and street connectivity strongly influence household travel behaviors and costs. At the regional level, sprawl is the strongest indicator of average transportation costs, with households in higher density areas having lower transportation costs.
Courtesy US Department of Housing & Urban Development

Earlier this week, Secretary Lew attended a Making Home Affordable (MHA) Help for Homeowners event in Landover, Maryland. While there, the Secretary met with homeowners affected by the financial crisis and participated in a roundtable discussion with the DC metropolitan area’s housing leaders to discuss local and national approaches to foreclosure prevention.

Nearly 900 homeowners attended Tuesday’s event to meet face-to-face with their mortgage servicer, and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) approved housing counselors. Together with the Hope Now Alliance and NeighborWorks® America, Treasury and HUD have co-hosted 88 Help for Homeowners events across the country, including three in Maryland, and reached more than 75,000 homeowners.

Helping responsible homeowners is a cornerstone of the President’s efforts to secure a better bargain for the middle class. MHA offers some of the deepest and most dependable assistance available to prevent foreclosure and help homeowners recover from the impact of the recession. That’s why earlier this year we extended the application deadline for MHA until December 31, 2015. The program is a critical part of our efforts to reach as many struggling homeowners as possible while the need still exists.

Between private and public sources, almost seven million permanent loan modifications and other homeowner assistance actions have been taken since 2009, more than double the number of foreclosure completions. In MHA alone, more than 1.7 million homeowner assistance actions have taken place, including 1.2 million Home Affordable Mortgage Program (HAMP) permanent loan modifications. In the DC metropolitan area, more than 50,000 homeowners have received assistance through HAMP, the sixth highest in the nation.

While there is still more work to do, our initiatives have directly and indirectly helped millions of homeowners avoid foreclosure. The housing market may have turned a corner, but millions still live under the threat of foreclosure, and that is why we will continue working hard to help our neighbors impacted by the crisis stay in their homes.

For more information about the Making Home Affordable Program and events in your area, visit MakingHomeAffordable.gov or call the Homeowner’s HOPE™ Hotline at (888) 995-HOPE (4673).
COURTESY: US TREASURY DEPARTMENT

Many homeowners who saw an appreciation of home values in the last quarter have began improvements to their properties. The increase in home values, increases their leverage to borrow and spend on home improvement.

Despite the sluggish economic environment, sales of new homes is steeply on the rise. According to real estate industry analysts, there has been an increased demand for new homes by new buyers. As s result, investors have also dumped significant resources into the construction of new homes.