June ICE Mortgage Monitor: "Annual home price growth was 1.0% in mid-May"
Here is the ICE June Mortgage Monitor report (pdf).
Press Release: ICE Mortgage Monitor: Home Equity Withdrawals Reach Highest First-Quarter Level Since 2021
Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. … today released its June 2026 ICE Mortgage Monitor report, which found that homeowners tapped equity at the highest first-quarter levels since 2021. The increase was driven in part by second-lien lending, which reached its strongest first-quarter volume in nearly two decades as more borrowers chose to preserve their existing low-rate first mortgages.
“The housing market continues to be defined by the lock-in effect,” said Andy Walden, Head of Mortgage and Housing Market Research at ICE. “Millions of homeowners are sitting on first mortgages with rates well below current market levels, making second liens and HELOCs an attractive way to access equity without giving up those loans. While higher mortgage rates have reduced refinance opportunities and softened affordability gains in recent months, home prices continue to firm across much of the country and affordability remains improved from year-ago levels.”
Key findings from the June Mortgage Monitor include:
Q1 equity withdrawals increased, and Q1 second-lien lending reached an 18-year high
Equity withdrawals rose 2% year over year in Q1, reaching their highest first-quarter level since 2021. More than half (54%) of all equity extraction came through second liens as borrowers continued to preserve historically low first-mortgage rates. Cash-out refinance withdrawals reached their highest first-quarter level since 2022, while second-lien withdrawals posted their strongest first-quarter performance in nearly two decades.
3.9 million homeowners who took out primary loans from 2020–2022 now have a second lien
Nearly two-thirds of Q1 second-lien originations came from 2020–2022 vintage borrowers seeking to preserve their below market first-lien rates. Now 3.9 million people who took out a primary mortgage from 2020–2022 have added second liens. Cash-out refinances showed a broader vintage mix, with nearly half coming from 2023-or-later borrowers and a quarter from 2020–2022 vintage borrowers.
Falling HELOC rates are helping fuel demand for home equity products
Average second-lien HELOC rates fell to 6.6% in March, their most attractive level since late 2022. At those rates, a borrower can access $50,000 in equity with a monthly payment of roughly $275, down significantly from early 2024 levels. Average introductory HELOC rates also dipped slightly below the prime rate, highlighting increasingly aggressive lender competition for home equity business.
Affordability remains better than a year ago despite recent rate increases
A roughly 50-basis-point increase in mortgage rates since February has reversed some of the affordability gains seen earlier this year. Even so, homebuyers still have roughly 3% more purchasing power than they did a year ago, and the monthly payment on the average-priced home remains $48 lower than last May. Purchasing the average-priced home now requires 29.8% of median household income, down from 31.6% a year ago.
Home price growth has become more broad-based across the country
Nearly 70% of major markets posted annual home price gains in May, the largest share since July 2025, while almost 90% recorded seasonally adjusted month-over-month appreciation, the strongest reading in two years. The spread between the nation’s strongest and weakest housing markets has narrowed to one of the smallest levels on record, suggesting increasingly synchronized home price performance. Northeastern markets continue to lead annual appreciation, while a handful of formerly high-growth Sun Belt markets remain under pressure.
emphasis added
Mortgage Delinquency Rate Unchanged in April
Here is a graph of the national delinquency rate from ICE. Overall delinquencies were unchanged in April and remain below the pre-pandemic levels. Source: ICE McDash
The national delinquency rate held steady in April at 3.35%.
Overall, delinquency levels remain 45 basis points below pre-pandemic benchmarks set in January 2020 but are up 13 basis points from the same period last year.
The recent increase has been driven by a rise in serious delinquencies — loans 90 or more days past due but not in foreclosure — which, despite a seasonal decline in April, are up 21%, or 101,000 loans, from year-ago levels.
Early-stage delinquencies — loans 30 or 60 days past due — are down 5,000 over the same period.
The overall rise in serious delinquencies is largely attributable to FHA loans, where serious delinquencies are up 105,000 from a year ago, driven in large part by delays in cure timing among loans in trial payment plans.
VA serious delinquencies rose by a modest 4,500, while serious delinquencies among GSE loans (down 4,700), portfolio-held loans (down 1,700) and privately securitized loans (down 2,300) all declined from year-ago levels.
House Prices Up 1.0% Year-over-year in May
Here is the year-over-year in house prices according to the ICE Home Price Index (HPI). The ICE HPI is a repeat sales index. ICE reports the median price change of the repeat sales. The index was up 1.0% year-over-year in mid-May.
Early May data show annual home price growth rising for the third consecutive month, reaching 1.0% for the first time since July, up from 0.6% in February.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, prices rose 0.25% in May — modestly cooler than the 0.30% and 0.32% gains seen in March and April — as higher interest rates eased price pressure.
The ICE Home Price Index bears watching in the coming months. The headline growth rate is likely to trend higher near term as sluggish mid-2025 figures drop out of the comparison period, but the more telling indicator will be how seasonally adjusted monthly growth — which hit 24-month highs earlier this year amid low-6% and high-5% mortgage rates — responds
to 30-year rates eclipsing 6.5% again.
Single-family home prices (up 1.3%) continue to outpace condos (down 1.0%). More than half of major markets are seeing condo prices trail year-ago levels, and 98% of markets are seeing condos underperform single-family homes.
Scranton led all major markets with prices up 6.9% from a year ago, followed by Rochester, N.Y. (up 6.3%) and Bridgeport, Conn. (up 6.0%), with the seven hottest markets all located in the Northeast.
Cape Coral saw the largest annual decline at 3.7%, followed by Austin, Texas (down 3.2%) and Lakeland, Fla. (down 3.2%).
The spread between the hottest and coldest markets was just 10.6 percentage points in May — one of the tightest dispersions on record over the past 35 years — as lower rates earlier this year firmed up prices in the South, while
affordability pressures continue to cap price growth at the higher end of the market.
Seattle continues to experience home price softening, with prices down 2.3% from a year ago. Prices in Las Vegas are 1.8% below year-ago levels.
Some 70% of markets are seeing year-over-year gains — the highest share since July 2025 — with nearly 90% of markets posting seasonally adjusted month-over-month increases, the largest such share in two years.
There is much more in the mortgage monitor.