Aram Zucker-Scharff

More data on student debt and home ownership:

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, tireless chroniclers of the growth and impact of student debt, released new data this week showing that 30-year-olds with student debt are still less likely to have mortgage debt than 30-year-olds without.

U.S. Pending Home Sales Essentially Unchanged In January :
NAR said its pending home sales index inched up 0.1 percent to 95.0 in January after falling 5.8 percent to a revised 94.9 in December. Economists had been expecting pending sales to show a st…

UK House prices rise to four-year high, insurers deny an inflating bubble.: Financial contagion anybody?

Despite the surge in “seasonally-adjusted new home sales”, un-seasonally-adjusted mortgage applications tumbled 8.5% this week, the biggest drop in 3 months as the modest January bounce has been almost entirely unwound. This pushes the broad MBA mortgage applications index down to near its lowest in 14 years. However, the home-purchase index continues to collapse. Purchase applications are down 30% from their May highs plunging in the last few weeks to their lowest level since 1995.