Housing News

This week, Frank Nothaft, the chief economist at CoreLogic, joins the Housing News Podcast to discuss how the housing market has fared in 2020. During the interview, Nothaft discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the housing market’s vitality as well as the economy. Notably, Nothaft also offers his market predictions for 2021. Here is a small preview of the interview with Frank Nothaft. The transcript below has been lightly edited for length and clarity: HW: Let’s talk about CoreLogic’s Forecast. What are you expecting for the first quarter and first half of 2021? Frank Nothaft: We’re expecting mortgage rates to remain at record low levels, possibly well below 3%. I think that's going to be the case, not only at the start of the year but for most or all of 2021. That's going to be very important in stimulating home sales, and also refinance volume. However, I'm not expecting refinance volume in 2021 to hit the same numbers that we saw in 2020, but I think it's still going to be pretty strong. In fac