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…

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.

Home prices in 2013 notch biggest annual gains since 2005, although they may be running out of steam:

Home prices posted their largest annual gain last year since 2005, according to a report, amid a frenzy of sales activity, low mortgage rates, and reduced inventories during the first half of the year.

Enjoy the sudden housing price explosion that precedes a likely fast slowdown, because that led to such good things before.