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33 » VISIT US ONLINE @ DSNEWS.COM TRACKING DELINQUENCY NATIONWIDE On Oct. 30, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) launched a Mortgage Performance Trends Tool that allows users to explore interactive charts and graphs to dig into the mortgage delinquency rates for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. e tool's info is powered by information from the National Mortgage Database—launched by the CFPB and Federal Housing Finance Agency in 2012. "Measuring the number of consumers who have fallen behind on their mortgage payments is a telling barometer of the health of mortgage markets locally and nationally," said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. "is rich information source identifies mortgage delinquency rates down to the county and metro-area level, making it a useful public tool." e tool breaks down delinquencies into two general categories. e first are borrowers 30-89 days behind (generally missing one or two payments). According to the CFPB tracking, borrowers in this category "can detect trends in the increase or decrease in the number of delinquencies, and act as an early warning sign for mortgage market developments that impact the overall economy." e second category is made up of borrowers in serious delinquency (which is categorized as 90 days or more overdue). According to the CFPB, high rates of seriously delinquency can signal severe economic distress in the marketplace, but according to the Mortgage Performance Trends Tool, the rates of serious delinquency are at the lowest level since the financial crisis. In its peak in 2010, this rate was at 4.9 percent according to the CFPB, but as of March 2017, it has fallen to 1.1. percent. New Jersey and Mississippi lead the nation with serious delinquency rates of 2.1 percent. States that show vast improvement since the housing crisis include California and Arizona, which in 2010 had seriously delinquency rates of 7.5 percent. As of March, Arizona's serious delinquency comes in at 0.8 percent, while California has one of the lowest serious delinquency rates in the nation at 0.6. e only two states lower than California are Alaska and Colorado—both at 0.5 percent. NEW PEAKS IN HPI, OLD CONCERNS LINGER Black Knight released its latest Home Price Index at the end of October, showing August's residential estate transaction data. U.S. home prices have peaked yet again at $282,000 in August and while this is the 64th month of consecutive increases, monthly appreciation is slowing down, with prices rising only 0.24 percent month-to-month, according to Black Knight. e rate of monthly appreciation was double that in July, making this the fifth consecutive month of slowing growth. By state, New York took the lead in monthly home-price appreciation, showing a 1.58 percent increase in August, followed by Nevada at 1.04 percent and Vermont at 1.03 percent. Among the 20 largest states, 10 reached new peaks of home price and only Georgia, Maryland, and Virginia saw slight home-price decreases at 0.17, 0.05, and 0.23 percent, respectively. Of the 40 largest metros recorded by Black Knight, 12 saw slight declines, with Denver having the largest decline at 0.32 percent. Seattle's home prices rose 12.02 percent in 2017 and 14 percent compared to 2016. Compared to the same time last year, home prices have increased 6 percent and the annual rate of appreciation remains solid at 6.24 percent. Black Knight's HPI covers nearly 90 percent of U.S. residential properties at the zip-code level in disclosure and nondisclosure states and is taken from the nation's largest public records data set. e numbers noted in this report are not seasonally adjusted. CHICAGO FED EXAMINES ECONOMIC EXPANSION On Oct. 23, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago released its monthly index for October 2017—the Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI)— reporting the overall economic activity across the U.S. e index, which was constructed using data available as of Oct. 19, 2017, analyzes economic activity based on summarizing variation in 85 data series classified into four main categories. So, how does the Chicago Fed organize this data? e CFNAI is designed so that periods of economic expansion have values of above negative 0.70. Meanwhile, periods of economic contraction have values below negative 0.70. According to the index, the overall economic activity reported an increase in growth with a positive 0.17 in September, compared to a negative 0.37 in August. However, despite this slight increase in September, the index reports that month-to- month movements are volatile. erefore, the index also evaluates a three-month moving average to provide a more consistent picture of national economic growth—the most recent three-month moving average was unchanged at negative 0.16 in September. e contribution of the housing category to the CFNAI is combined with personal consumption—representing an increase to a negative 0.07 in September from a negative 0.11 in August. However, housing starts decreased to about 1.13 million annualized units in September from about 1.2 million in August. In addition, the index notes that housing permits decreased to about 1.23 million in annualized units in September, which is a decrease from 1.27 million in the previous month. Conversely, consumption indicators improved, which increased the category's overall contribution to the economy. In addition, the report's job-market gauge was a positive contributor to the economy, increasing to a positive 0.06 from a positive 0.01 in the previous month.

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