Insights
Market reports, forecast data, industry insights, and more from iEmergent.
The MBA’s Independent Mortgage Bankers Conference was in New Orleans, so that’s where we headed for our monthly market analysis.
Let’s look at mortgage opportunity forecasts (a.k.a., what’s expected to happen in the market) and how data informs lending strategies.
The data and maps in this email all come from iEmergent’s proprietary forecasts, datasets, and analysis tools, which are available in Mortgage MarketSmart. Lenders partner with iEmergent to grow volume, find mortgage opportunity in their communities, target diverse lending initiatives, and so much more.
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While looking at national mortgage forecast numbers is interesting and relevant, there is no uniform U.S. mortgage market. There are 84,414 census tracts and 387 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) that make up the U.S.—and each one is unique. We forecast mortgage opportunity at the census tract level where lenders can use that data to make localized decisions.
Since 2010, iEmergent’s forecast has outperformed most predictive analytics from other industries, maintaining an accuracy rate of over 90%, and is backed by a money-back accuracy guarantee*. You can read more about our forecasts here.
Let’s dive into a market to see what’s in store for New Orleans in 2024. Where will the loans be? To what borrowers?
The New Orleans-Metairie CBSA includes 495,557 households and has a homeownership rate of 63.07%. How do those demographics break down into mortgages? Here’s a look ahead at 2024:
The New Orleans market is expected to grow over the next five years, but not by much.
iEmergent’s Mortgage Velocity Index (MVI) compares a market’s rate of growth in loans over the next five years, compared to the growth rate of the overall U.S. market.
An MVI of 1 means a market is growing on pace with national market growth, so a 0.05 MVI means New Orleans is growing at a much slower rate than the overall U.S. market.
With slow growth in the market, lenders in New Orleans will need to have targeted, data-driven strategies to reach mortgage-ready homebuyers. One way to do that is to use data to find the most relevant real estate partners for your goals.
For example, let’s say you want to partner with real estate agents who have a strong track record with low- to moderate-income (LMI) borrowers in the market. We can use Mortgage MarketSmart to find the highest-volume—by listings or by dollars—LMI listing agents in the market.
Want to see the names and contact information? Request a Mortgage MarketSmart demo.
Lenders can pass this actionable information to MLOs who can build relationships with these potential partners.
While the market as a whole has an MVI of 0.05, individual census tracts are growing and shrinking at their own paces. It helps to know which census tracts are growing the fastest, as visualized below for New Orleans.
This map shows MVI (discussed in a previous section) for each census tract in the New Orleans CBSA. The darker the census tract, the faster the growth over the next five years. Lenders in this market can use this data, and many more data points like this, to pinpoint opportunity in a market.
Over the next decade, new households are expected to be mostly households of color. Growth in mortgage lending is possible—and practical—by reaching out to underserved markets. Right now, for Black and Hispanic households in the New Orleans market, the homeownership gap is stark.
Homeownership Rates
The overall minority homeownership rate is just 49.3%—more than 10 percentage points lower than the overall homeownership rate. 33.3% of the New Orleans population is Black and yet there’s a more than 15-percentage-point homeownership rate gap.
But it doesn’t have to stay that way. Lenders can use data to reach underserved borrowers by using data to:
Of the $106.5 million dollars in incremental purchase loan growth in New Orleans from 2023 to 2025, $17.8 million—or 16.7%—of that growth will be to low- to moderate-income borrowers.
The LMI-eligible tracts in the New Orleans market are shown here in bold red:
Imagine having this data (and more!) for your markets. What kind of strategies could you plan? How would your 2024 look different?
Forward-looking data—combined with historic, current data, and innovating analysis tools—set lenders apart. If you want to grow in 2024, let’s talk.
All maps and data in this blog are from iEmergent’s proprietary forecasts and Mortgage MarketSmart’s suite of market intelligence tools.
Generally accepted minimum accuracy standards for predictive analytics: 70%.