Buyers intending to use their purchase as a primary residence rose from 72% in Q1 to 82% of purchases in April. Every other type of intended use fall sharply:
- Investor purchases dropped from 11% to 9%
- Second home purchases dropped from 13% to 8%
- iBuyer purchases dropped from 3% to less than 1%
The last time we saw such a low percentage of purchases going to iBuyers was in Q1 2016. Their peak was Q1 2019 when they hit 4.6% of transactions. iBuyers were making few offers (none in some cases) during April, so the closed purchases transactions by iBuyers will be very low when we update this chart to include May as well. We do not have all the affidavits counted yet for May, but the combined count is currently 42 acquisitions, which is down 92% compared with the 549 purchased in May 2019. So we conclude that the sub- market most affected by COVID-19 is the iBuyer segment.
Dramatic things are going on in the lending world:
- April 2020 saw the highest monthly pre-payment rate in 16 year – up 23% from March and up 136% over April 2019 – largely due to the very low interest rates
- April 2020 saw the largest ever single-month jump in delinquency – up over 90% – largely due to borrowers requesting forbearance
1.6 million homes loans became past due during April 2020 - Foreclosure moratoriums brought foreclosure starts to a new low of 7,400 – down 80% from April 2019
- During April 2020 Arizona home loans that are non-current (delinquent or already in foreclosure) jumped 91% to 5.2% of all loans (compared with April 2019)
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