(RECAP: On Tuesday, as the Charlottesville City Council considered doubling the city’s annual contribution to its affordable housing fund, members of the city’s Plotting Commission expressed skepticism about a new set of policy recommendations for increasing Charlottesville’s supply of affordable housing. In March 2015, the City Council approved the use of $62,000 from the affordable housing fund to pay for the Charlottesville Comprehensive Housing Analysis and Policy Recommendations. The report, prepared by the Robert Charles Lessor Co., was presented to the council in January 2016. The city’s Housing Advisory Committee reviewed the report with staff from the city’s Neighborhood Development Services department last year and issued a list of more than 30 recommended actions to the council. Stacy Pethia, housing programs coordinator for the city, questioned for feedback on these recommendations during Tuesday’s joint meeting of the Charlottesville and Albemarle County plotting commissions. In 2010, councilors set a goal to make supported affordable units comprise 15 percent of Charlottesville’s housing inventory by 2025. But that ratio has stayed flat at 10 percent since then.)

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(RECAP: A solid fourth-quarter performance in 2016 helped maintain momentum and close out a strong year for Virginia real estate. A total of 26,308 residential properties went to closing across the commonwealth October through December, up 6.8 percent from the same period in 2015, according to figures reported Jan. 24 by the Virginia Association of Realtors (VAR). For the full calendar year, sales across Virginia amounted to 116,091 transactions, up 6.6 percent from 2015. In the fourth quarter, year-over-year home sales were up in every corner of the commonwealth, ranging from a 0.8-percent increase in the Shenandoah Valley to a 15.7-percent jump in Southwest Virginia. In VAR’s Northern Virginia reporting area, sales were up 6.5 percent to 9,598. The area encompasses the inner and outer suburbs of the Washington region, as well as areas farther south toward Fredericksburg. The median sales price for all properties that sold during the quarter statewide was $265,000, up 3.9 percent from a year before and rising 5.6 percent from 2014. The median price was down from the $279,000 reported in the second quarter and $271,000 reported in the third quarter of 2016, a seasonal drop in line with historic norms.)

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(RECAP: The FHFA is seeking a significant amount of information from lenders that specialize in making chattel loans to manufactured homebuyers due to a lack of reliable data on the market. In its final “duty to serve” rule issued in December, the agency opened the door for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy manufactured housing loans that are secured by land and titled as real estate. But the agency took a more cautious view of chattel loans — which are not secured by land — and are viewed as more personal loans. With industry advocates pushing the FHFA to ease up on chattel loans, the agency is hoping to receive more data from lenders on how such loans have performed. The Manufactured Housing Institute has been trying to encourage Fannie and Freddie to enter the chattel market. The FHFA has incentivized the development of a pilot program for chattel loans, but it’s not clear whether the GSEs will do so.)

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