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AGENCY REVIEW A LOOK AT THE GSES' LATEST DELINQUENCY NUMBERS AND TOP HEADLINES 5.59% fannie single family freddie single family 5.07% "Despite considerable uncertainty stemming from the fiscal front, businesses have shrugged it off. The strengthening trend in hiring over the past six months provides some comfort that the economy will be resilient enough to withstand additional headwinds that may lie ahead." January 2013 fannie » 3.18% freddie » 3.20% 4.55% 4.03% 3.51% 3.00% 2.48% note: Delinquent loans reported here include all single-family loans 90 or more days past due as a percentage of portfolio size. Historical data covers a moving 12-month period. Source: Fannie Mae January 2013 Monthly Summary and Freddie Mac January 2013 Monthly Volume Summary 1.96% 1.44% 0.92% 0.40% /12 /13 12 01 /12 /12 11 /12 10 09 /12 /12 08 /12 06 07 /12 /12 05 /12 04 03 /12 /12 02 /11 01 /11 11 12 /11 /11 10 /11 09 /11 07 08 /11 /11 06 /11 05 04 /11 /11 03 /11 02 01 FHFA Price Index Rises for 11 Consecutive Months Purchase prices of homes backing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages rose 5.5 percent year-over-year in 2012's final quarter, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) reported. The seasonally adjusted purchase-only Home Price Index (HPI) increased 1.4 percent on a quarter-to-quarter basis in Q 4 2012. Monthover-month, December's index was 0.6 percent above November's, marking the 11th straight month of increases. The HPI is calculated using home sales price information from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages, and seasonally adjuste, it rose in the fourth quarter in 38 states and the District of Columbia. Andrew Leventis, FHFA's principal economist, commented, "The fourth quarter was another strong one for house prices, as it was the third consecutive quarter where U.S. price growth exceeded one percent. While a significant number of homes remained in the foreclosure pipeline, the actual number of homes 20 VERBOSITY available for sale was very low and fell over the course of the quarter." FHFA's new "distress-free" HPI suggests price gains in Q 4 may be partially attributed to declines in the share of distressed sales. For nine of the 12 metropolitan areas covered by the new set of indices, the distress-free measures—which remove the direct effect of short sales and sales of bank-owned properties—showed more modest price gains than were evident in the traditional purchase-only indices. While the national purchase-only HPI rose 5.5 percent from Q 4 2011 to Q 4 2012, FHFA notes prices of other goods and services rose 1.7 percent over the same period. Accordingly, the inflation-adjusted price of homes rose approximately 3.7 percent in 2012. The agency also released figures for its expanded-data HPI, a metric introduced in August 2011 that adds transaction information from county recorder offices and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to the HPI —Doug Duncan, Fannie Mae's Chief Economist data sample. According to the expanded-data HPI, prices rose 1.6 percent quarter-overquarter; the yearly increase in Q 4 matched the normal HPI increase at 5.5 percent. Of the nine census divisions, the Pacific region experienced the strongest increase in the fourth quarter, posting a 4.2 percent price gain from the prior quarter. Prices were weakest in the East North Central division, which showed negligible movement one way or the other. Fourth-quarter price gains were greatest in the Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale area of Arizona, which saw a 6.8 percent increase from the third quarter to the fourth quarter of 2012. At the other end of the spectrum, New Jersey's Edison-New Brunswick metro posted a 0.8 percent decrease over the same period. FHFA's purchase-only and all-transactions HPI track average house price changes in repeat sales or refinancings on the same single-family properties. The purchase-only index is based on more than 6 million repeat sales transactions, while the all-transactions index includes more than 47 million repeat transactions. Both indexes are based on data obtained from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for mortgages originated over the past 38 years.