The Latest Breaking News from Freddie Mac

A few years after risky mortgages and related investments led to a global financial collapse, the Federal Reserve put out a handbook to help consumers make smarter choices about their home loan options. The focus was on adjustable-rate mortgages, whose exotic variants were among the prime culprits in the meltdown.

Compared to other sectors of the wider economy, the housing and mortgage industries have traditionally been slower to embrace cutting-edge technologies and digital solutions. A myriad of reasons explain this pokey response to evolving change, ranging from the sector’s conservative risk tolerance to a lack of standardization in many evolving technologies.

The latest data news from the housing market included new records being achieved in single-family home and condominium sales, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage crashing through the 4.5% level, and a warning from a prominent industry economist on the potential for a recession created by the Federal Reserve.

This week's housing and mortgage industry data is something of a seesaw ride, with mortgage rates, millennial homebuying and the mortgage delinquency rate rising while mortgage applications and a major builder's output did not.