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Kiavi Recognized as a Top Innovative Technology Company by HousingWire

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For the sixth consecutive year, Kiavi is recognized for its unique technology platform that provides real estate investors with reliable, timely capital to scale their businesses Kiavi, a leading provider of financing to real estate investors, was selected as a HousingWire Tech100 Real Estate winner for the sixth consecutive year. Kiavi is the only non-QM financing partner to real estate investors to be named a 2023 award winner, which recognizes the most innovative technology companies in the housing industry. “I am delighted to see Kiavi once again recognized by HousingWire for the ways in which our innovative technology platform helps meet the complex and unique needs of real estate investors,” said Arvind Mohan, Chief Executive Officer, Kiavi. “This recognition demonstrates just how powerful and unique Kiavi’s data, models, and technology platform are – which is one of the reasons why we have such a strong leadership position in the market. We will continue to put our technology platform to work to provide real estate investors across the nation with reliable, timely capital to scale their businesses,” he concluded. Kiavi’s technology platform provides real estate investors with a simpler, faster, and more reliable way to access the capital they need to scale their businesses. Kiavi uses 7.8 billion data points from its 50,000+ transactions to power its machine-learning models – such as determining a property’s after-repair value – which help its customers make smart investment decisions. This platform also enables borrowers to close much faster than traditional financing options by eliminating time-consuming and extraneous elements of the lending process. For more than a decade, the HW Tech100 program has identified and recognized the most innovative technology companies serving the real estate industry. Each year the Tech100 program has continued to expand and the applicants increase in caliber and innovation as the demand for technology in housing continues to grow. “We’re focused on elevating the innovators that are building paths and solutions that enable the largest and most important sector in the U.S. economy to operate efficiently and profitably — the innovators that make housing more accessible and more desirable for the 130 million households that benefit from the stability and economic advantages of homeownership,” said Clayton Collins, CEO of HW Media. “The Tech100 program is the gold standard for organizations in housing who are at the forefront of the kind of innovation that will change the industry forever.” About KiaviWith more than $13 billion in funded loans, Kiavi is one of the nation’s largest private lenders to residential real estate investors (“REIs”). Kiavi harnesses the power of data & technology to offer REIs a simpler, more reliable, and faster way to access the capital they need to scale their businesses. Formerly known as LendingHome, Kiavi is committed to helping its customers revitalize the approximately $25 trillion worth of aged U.S. housing stock to provide move-in ready homes and rental housing for millions of Americans across the country. For more information, visit www.kiavi.com.

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Early Signs of a Rebound Retreated in February on the Heels of Additional Rate Hikes Prices have Continued Downward Thanks to Persistent Tight Supply, Slowing Market Activity and Steadily Increasing Interest Rates Net New Listings and Contract Volume Experienced 10th Consecutive Month of Year-Over-Year Declines, With Decreases of 43.6% and 17.0%, Respectively HouseCanary, Inc. (“HouseCanary”), a national brokerage known for its real estate valuation accuracy, released its latest Market Pulse report, covering 22 listing-derived metrics and comparing data between February 2022 and February 2023. The Market Pulse is an ongoing review of proprietary data and insights from HouseCanary’s nationwide platform. February was the tenth consecutive month of double-digit declines in net new listings on a year-over-year basis. Consequently, this has continued to drive down prices and lag contract volume, providing little relief to the ongoing inventory shortage. The market is also experiencing significant increases in listing removals year-over-year. On the contrary, the single-family rental market inventory has recovered considerably since the pandemic, experiencing an 88.3% rebound since February 2021. Although rate hikes from the Federal Reserve picked back up in February, some observations made in the last couple of months have persisted, such as the days on market and sale-to-list-price ratio continuing to imply a balanced market but displaying signs of trending towards a buyer’s market. Notably, median days on market have decreased from 53 in January to 43 in February, representing an 18.9% decrease month-over-month. Jeremy Sicklick, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of HouseCanary, commented: “Although the rate hike slowdown from the Federal Reserve in January helped bolster housing market activity, these early signs of a potential rebound were halted in February. While higher interest rates continue to slow market activity, we believe that the market environment is still headed towards a buyer’s market, and expect that more normalized supply-demand dynamics and pricing could be in play by the end of 2023.” Key Takeaways: Learn more at www.housecanary.com.

Nearly 9 in 10 first-time sellers think they could have gotten a higher price by making different choices

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Rookie mistakes: Zillow survey reveals four common recent first-time seller regrets An overwhelming share of Americans who sold a home for the first time in the past two years wish they had done something differently (84%). A new Zillow® survey conducted online by The Harris Poll finds that even in a sellers’ market, many recent first-time sellers have regrets about the pricing, timing, or marketing of their home. Rookie mistakes can be costly, especially when selling one of life’s biggest financial assets — a home. Homeowners looking to list their home for sale this spring can set themselves up for success by anticipating and avoiding these four common regrets of first-time sellers. Regret #1: Pricing incorrectly The most common thing recent first-time home sellers wish they had done differently is set a higher list price (39%). It’s understandable, given those who sold during the pandemic’s red hot housing market saw nearly every home command a sky-high price. But today’s market is different. Pricing a home too high could lead to a slower sale or force the seller to drop their price. The median time on the market is now 73 days nationwide, but well-priced listings that find a buyer take only 31 days to go under contract. In January, nearly 1 in 4 listings had a price cut (22%), which is 10 percentage points higher than last winter. That’s why nearly 3 in 4 agents believe pricing is the most important thing sellers need to get right in a less frenzied housing market. “This spring’s sellers are more likely to regret pricing their home too high,” said Zillow senior economist Nicole Bachaud. “The price their neighbor commanded a year ago may no longer be realistic. They need to adjust their expectations if they want to avoid having their home linger on the market. It’s more important than ever for sellers to rely on the advice of a great local agent who understands their neighborhood and has a winning pricing strategy.” Regret #2: Ignoring online curb appeal Nearly 9 in 10 recent first-time sellers think something could have helped them get a higher sale price than they received (87%). Almost 2 in 5 (39%) think better listing photos could have boosted their bottom line, while 1 in 4 recent first-time sellers (25%) think a virtual tour could have helped sell their home for more. Most prospective buyers shop for homes online, meaning sellers can’t ignore online curb appeal. A great listing media package that includes professional high-resolution photography and drone photography helps showcase a home’s best features. However, today’s buyers expect an even more immersive experience. Listings that also include a 3D home virtual tour or an interactive floor plan get 69% more page views and 80% more saves on Zillow. Regret #3: Bad timing One-quarter of recent first-time sellers (25%) wish they had listed their home at a different time. While the best time to sell will always depend on a homeowner’s personal circumstances, if the owner has flexibility, the second half of April is the optimal time to list a home for sale nationwide, Zillow research shows. Timing the sale of a home with the purchase of a new one is one of the biggest stressors sellers experience. More than one-third of recent first-time sellers wish they had known how long — or how quickly (36%) — it would take to sell their home. Nearly 2 out of 5 recent first-time sellers (37%) say selling their home on their timeline and/or with a flexible closing date or selling their home quickly was their top priority, more than the share of sellers who prioritized getting top dollar (26%). If timing is the top priority, sellers should explore all their options. On Zillow, homeowners will be able to request both a cash offer from Opendoor and an estimate of what their home could sell for on the open market through the Zillow Premier Agent® program. Sellers in Atlanta and Raleigh can now see these options on Zillow, with more metro areas coming in the next few months. Regret #4: Skimping on repairs Sellers gearing up for the spring home shopping season need to roll up their sleeves and spruce up their homes if they want to attract bids from a smaller pool of buyers. More than one-quarter of recent first-time sellers (25%) think they could have gotten a higher sale price if they had invested in more home improvements and repairs. “The right projects can pay off,” said Amanda Pendleton, Zillow’s home trends expert. “Sellers need to think strategically about their return on investment before diving into repairs and renovations. Landscaping, interior painting and carpet cleaning are the most commonly completed seller projects for good reason. They boost online curb appeal and send a powerful signal to a buyer that a home is well-maintained.” Roughly two-thirds of recent first-time sellers (66%) took on at least two home improvement projects to prepare their home for sale. Nearly 8 in 10 recent first-time sellers (78%) believe the projects they completed helped their home sell. SOURCE Zillow Group, Inc.

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Black Knight, Inc. reports the following “first look” at January 2023 month-end mortgage performance statistics derived from its newly enhanced and greatly expanded McDash loan-level data set representing more than 60% of active mortgages nationwide. Loan-level detail on more than 200M active and historical mortgages has already made McDash the industry’s leading repository of servicer-contributed performance data. The vast population of active mortgages in the data set, now coupled with Black Knight’s eMBS agency securities data, also allow for more precise market sizing to better reflect the evolving mortgage landscape of the past several years – and of that to come. “McDash was already the mortgage and capital markets sectors’ go-to source for loan-level performance metrics on the majority of the market, contributed directly by the nation’s largest servicers,” said Ben Graboske, president of Black Knight Data & Analytics. “Mortgage data in McDash comes from a wide range of servicers, including both Black Knight MSP servicing clients as well as those using other servicing systems of record. Now at over 80 active contributors and counting, we’ve also significantly increased our coverage of nonbank servicers as well as those with smaller portfolios. Prior to this, visibility into these portfolios – representing millions of loans and a dynamic cross-section of the market – simply hasn’t been available at this level of granularity in public performance metrics.” Delinquencies were down across the board in January, with the overall national delinquency rate declining 10 basis points to 3.38% month over month, down 15.1% year over year. The number of borrowers 30-days late decreased by 46K (-4.8%), while 60-day delinquencies also ticked down slightly. Serious delinquencies (90+ days past due) continued to improve nationally (-4K), with such inventories declining in a large majority (44) of states. Florida – still dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Ian – saw another 1.7K loans fall into serious delinquency. Foreclosure starts rose 17% in the month to 33K, marking the fourth consecutive increase, but remain 37% below pre-pandemic levels. Foreclosure was started on 5.6% of serious delinquencies in January, still 48% below the start rate seen in January 2020. Active foreclosure inventory rose by 2.5% in the month, and is now up 48K or 20% since January 2022, but remains nearly 20% below pre-pandemic levels. A total of 7K foreclosures were completed nationally in January, up 15.2% from the month prior, but remain nearly 50% below early 2020 levels. Graboske added: “Given the fundamental changes we’ve seen in the market’s makeup – even before the pandemic – and as the industry and wider economy move ahead into an uncertain future, this additional visibility couldn’t come at a more important time. Our role as a public provider of objective and unvarnished housing and mortgage market data and analysis is something we take very seriously. We’ve been through enough boom-and-bust cycles in the mortgage industry to understand just how critical this role is – to our industry, as well to the public, the media and the wider American economy.” For this month’s full First Look press release, including tables and trendlines, please visit us here. The company will provide a more in-depth review of this data in its monthly Mortgage Monitor report, which includes an analysis of data supplemented by detailed charts and graphs that reflect trend and point-in-time observations. The Mortgage Monitor report will be available online at https://www.blackknightinc.com/data-reports/ by March 6, 2023. For more information about gaining access to Black Knight’s loan-level database, please send an email to Mortgage.Monitor@bkfs.com.

Radian Appoints Sumita Pandit as Chief Growth Officer

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Radian Group Inc. announced that Sumita Pandit has been appointed Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Growth Officer effective March 6, 2023. Reporting to Radian’s Chief Executive Officer Rick Thornberry, she will join the company’s executive leadership team and lead activities associated with developing and implementing the company’s long-term strategic growth plans. “I am delighted to have Sumita join our team and I look forward to working with her to develop and execute our comprehensive long-term growth strategy. She is a talented executive with a successful track record of helping transformative digital companies achieve their growth plans. Given her broad experience, Sumita is an excellent addition to complement our outstanding team as we continue to focus on accelerating our strategic vision for Radian in a rapidly changing marketplace,” said Thornberry. “In this position, Sumita will be focused on leveraging Radian’s strong capital position and strategic financial flexibility to identify, develop and execute on opportunities to achieve our long-term strategic goals.” “I am excited to join Radian and look forward to partnering with Rick and the rest of the leadership team to drive the company into its next phase of growth,” Pandit said. “Radian is a leader in the mortgage and real estate markets, and its focus on digital transformation puts it squarely in the vanguard of what’s next in those sectors. With strong customer relationships, proprietary data and analytics platforms, and innovative digital products and services, combined with a talented team and capital resources, I believe Radian is uniquely positioned to lead the mortgage and real estate markets into the future and I am excited to be a member of the team.” Pandit joins Radian after serving as the Chief Operating Officer of global digital payment company, dLocal, since 2021. Previously, Pandit was a Managing Director and Global Head of Fintech Investment Banking for J.P. Morgan. Prior to J.P. Morgan, Pandit worked at Goldman Sachs. During her investment banking career, she advised some of the world’s most transformational companies across industry verticals including fintech, proptech, insurtech, financial software and neo-banks. In 2021, she was named to the Top 25 Women Leaders in Financial Technology list by The Financial Technology Report. She serves on the board of Pushpay, a public company that offers donor engagement software to non-profits. Pandit earned an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was a Palmer Scholar, and earned her undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, India. Media:Rashi Iyer – Phone 215.231.1167email: rashi.iyer@radian.com

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Pending home sales improved slightly, but an ongoing affordability crisis and lack of homes for sale kept many house hunters on the sidelines Pending home sales rose 0.5% from a month earlier in January on a seasonally-adjusted basis, according to a new report from Redfin (redfin.com), the technology-powered real estate brokerage. That compares with December’s revised month-over-month increase of 1.4%, which was the first gain in 14 months. Pending sales fell from a year earlier, but the decline eased for the second month in a row—to 29.4% in January from 32.5% in December and a record 35.5% drop in November. Redfin’s records date back to 2012. “A dip in mortgage rates brought some buyers off the bench in January, but the housing-market recovery was tempered by still-high housing costs and a limited number of homes being listed for sale,” said Redfin Deputy Chief Economist Taylor Marr. “There were fewer new listings in January than at any point on record, with the exception of the start of the pandemic. That hampered demand because it meant that many of the buyers who were still in the market had a tough time finding a home that met their needs. The shortage of homes for sale also buoyed home prices.” Marr continued: “The housing market took two steps forward in December and January but has taken one step back in February. Mortgage rates crept back up this month, which is prompting more buyers and sellers to back off.” Home-purchase applications dropped to the lowest level since 1995 last week as mortgage rates jumped on expectations that the Federal Reserve will need to raise interest rates again to combat inflation. The average 30-year-fixed mortgage rate is now 6.5%, up from an average of 6.27% in January and 3.89% a year ago. That has caused the typical homebuyer’s monthly payment to rise more than $500 year over year. Closed home sales fell 1.4% from a month earlier in January and slumped a record 36.6% from a year earlier. In Redfin’s December market report, the company noted that the year-over-year decline in closed sales had eased slightly, but that didn’t continue into the new year. The large drop in closed sales is partly due to the fact that many of the home purchases that closed in January went under contract in the fall, when mortgage rates hit a 20-year high. New Listings Hit Second-Lowest Level on Record as Sellers Held on to Low Rates New listings fell 1.6% from a month earlier in January and dropped 19.9% from a year earlier. While that’s an improvement from the 25.3% year-over-year decline in December—the largest drop on record aside from the pandemic start—listings remained scarce. There were fewer new listings in January than any other month on record aside from April 2020, when the onset of the pandemic brought the housing market to a halt. Many homeowners are reluctant to sell because they don’t want to give up their relatively low mortgage rates. About 85% of mortgage holders have a rate far below today’s level of roughly 6%. Homeowners are also hesitant to put their homes on the market due to soft homebuyer demand that’s forcing sellers to cut prices. The median sale price of U.S. homes was $383,249 in January, down 1.4% from December and 11.5% below the May all-time high. Still, prices were up 1.5% from a year earlier, in part because low supply kept prices afloat. Almost one in every five home listings (17.7%) had a price drop last month. While that’s down from the record high of 22.2% in October, it’s up from 7% in January 2022—the largest year-over-year increase on record. Just 21.2% of homes sold above their final list price, the lowest level in two years. “Nice homes that are priced fairly are selling, but homes that are overpriced or poorly maintained are lingering on the market,” said Shay Stein, a Redfin real estate agent in the Las Vegas area. “A lot of sellers who don’t get the price they had hoped for are taking their homes off the market. Many of them have a rock-bottom mortgage rate and figure they can wait to sell.” The typical home that sold was on the market for 51 days—the highest level since February 2020. That’s up from 27 days in January 2022. Homes are taking longer to sell in part because homebuyer competition has dwindled. Roughly two of every five home offers (42.1%) written by Redfin agents faced a bidding war in January, the lowest level since April 2020. That’s down from 43.1% a month earlier and 68% a year earlier. Pandemic boomtowns including Austin and Tampa saw among the largest declines in competition, as many homebuyers have been priced out. With many homes now lingering on the market, overall housing supply has ticked up. While active listings fell 1.2% from a month earlier in January, they were up 14.5% from a year earlier—just shy of the 15% record year-over-year gain in December. Active listings hit a record low in January 2022, which is one reason the year-over-year increase is so dramatic. Metro-Level Highlights To view the full report, including charts, additional metro-level data on competition and home-purchase cancellations, as well as methodology, please visit: https://www.redfin.com/news/housing-market-tracker-january-2023.