Yearly Archives: 2017

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) projects commercial and multifamily mortgage originations will increase in 2017, ending the year at $515 billion, up 5 percent from the 2016 volumes. MBA expects volumes to remain at roughly that level in 2018. MBA forecasts mortgage banker originations of just multifamily mortgages at $235 billion in 2017, with total multifamily lending at $271 billion. After strong growth in 2017, multifamily lending is expected to slow slightly in 2018.

The construction industry has a message for career-seekers this October: the demand for construction workers is high, and firms are looking to hire. Despite an investment of more than $1 billion a year by its members to train the next generation of construction workers, Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) says the industry currently has 500,000 unfilled jobs, and that number could more than double if Congress and the White House agree on a promised $1 trillion infrastructure bill. ABC member firms are highlighting the worker shortfall and abundant opportunities for aspiring industry professionals during Careers in Construction Month

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) today recognized a total of 72 mortgage professionals -- 38 from the residential market segment and 34 from the commercial/multifamily market segment -- in a graduation ceremony for MBA's Future Leaders Program held at the association's Annual Convention & Expo in Denver, CO.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) today announced a package of 19 regulatory and administrative waivers aimed at helping communities to accelerate their recovery from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. While HUD granted a number of individual waivers following disasters in the past, today’s announcement represents one of the largest collections of regulatory and administrative waivers ever issued by the Department at one time

The Alliance to Save Energy chartered a national commission of business, government and civil society leaders that will work together to develop a pathway and recommendations to reduce energy use in the U.S. transportation sector by 50 percent by 2050 while meeting future mobility needs.

A new report from the Center for American Progress urges the United States to increase renewable energy trade with Mexico. The report says U.S. companies that manufacture solar panels can build part or all of the panels in the United States and install them in northern deserts of Mexico using existing North American trade and production systems.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, today chaired a hearing to discuss the innovation of emerging cyber technologies that can be used to protect our nation’s electric grids and other critical energy infrastructure from future cyberattacks. The committee heard from representatives of the Pacific Northwest, Oak Ridge and Idaho National Laboratories, Qubitekk, and New Context Services.

The following opinion editorial was written by Thomas J. Bisacquino, NAIOP president and CEO, and has appeared in newspapers across the U.S. Tax reform is a priority issue for NAIOP and commercial real estate. The piece reads as follows:

Mortgage applications decreased 4.6 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending October 20, 2017. The previous week's results included an adjustment for the Columbus Day holiday.

Pending home sales were unchanged in September, but activity declined on an annual basis both nationally and in all major regions, according to the National Association of Realtors®. The Pending Home Sales Index,* www.nar.realtor/pending-home-sales, a forward-looking indicator based on contract signings, was at 106.0 in September (unchanged from a downwardly revised August figure).

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) announced that Arch Mortgage Insurance and the CMG Foundation are the recipients of the MBA Opens Doors Foundation (ODF) 2017 Community Champion Award. The award recognizes those whose dedication resulted in unique and lasting contributions to advance the foundation's mission to enable families with a critically ill or injured child to keep their home, even in the face of significant medical bills.

The Mortgage Bankers Association announced today that it expects to see $1.2 trillion in purchase mortgage originations during 2018, a 7.3 percent increase from 2017.  In contrast, MBA anticipates refinance originations will decrease by 28.3 percent from 2017, to approximately $430 billion.  In total, mortgage originations will decrease to $1.60 trillion in 2018 from $1.69 trillion in 2017

Sales of newly built, single-family homes in September rose 18.9 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 667,000 units from an upwardly revised August reading, according to newly released data by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Census Bureau. This is the highest sales rate since October 2007. Year-to-date, new home sales are 8.6 percent above their level over the same period last year.

The Mortgage Bankers Association Political Action Committee (MORPAC) today awarded Fowler Williams, CMB, President and CEO at Crescent Mortgage Company, with the 2017 Schumacher-Bolduc Award at the association's Annual Convention and Expo held in Denver, CO. The award was given to Williams in recognition of his outstanding work on behalf of MBA's political advocacy programs and the mortgage lending industry

The Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) International conferred the BOMA 360 Performance Program® designation upon properties across the U.S. and Canada in the third quarter. This quarter included the second largest class of renewals in the program’s history, due in part to the efforts of commercial real estate company Brookfield, which re-certified more than a dozen properties across Canada. MC Realty Group and The RMR Group LLC also continued the trend of companies submitting multiple properties across their portfolios as new designees.

The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has entered into a license agreement with MicroLink Devices, Inc. (Niles, IL) to commercialize NREL's patented inverted metamorphic (IMM) multijunction solar cells. While high-efficiency multijunction solar cells are commonly used for space satellites, researchers have continued to look for ways to improve cost and performance to enable a broader range of applications. The IMM technique licensed by MicroLink Devices enables multijunction III-V solar cells to be grown with both higher efficiencies and lower costs than traditional multijunction solar cells by reversing the order in which individual sub-cells are typically grown

Building Equitable Cities, a new publication from the Urban Land Institute (ULI), explores how an increasing number of cities are focusing on providing economic mobility for a greater number of residents, with the ultimate goal of creating more inclusive, equitable environments in which to live, learn, work and thrive.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Census Bureau today jointly announced the following new residential sales statistics for September 2017. Sales of new single-family houses in September 2017 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 667,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Census Bureau.

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has awarded nine new contracts to its Phase II Unrestricted Building Maintenance and Operations (BMO) Best-in-Class strategic sourcing solution. This multiple award solution gives government agencies a more streamlined way of acquiring facility maintenance and operations services, including electrical maintenance, janitorial, landscaping, fire alarm and suppression system maintenance, commissioning, and more. While the procurement of the unrestricted contract was conducted through full and open competition, three of the nine new contracts have been awarded to small businesses.

Nearly half a million children living in the United States have elevated levels of lead in their blood that may cause significant harm to their health. To help increase awareness of this preventable disease, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and its partners are spearheading National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week, which will take place October 22-28. This year's theme is "Lead-Free Kids for a Healthy Future."