February 2024 Industry Speakers

Hamilton Fout Vice President of Economic & Strategic Research Fannie Mae		Hamilton Fout is Fannie Mae’s Vice President of Economic & Strategic Research, reporting to the Senior Vice President and Chief Economist. Fout is responsible for providing the forecasts of loan volumes and profiles to various business units of Fannie Mae. Fout is an important source of information regarding regional housing risks, home price dynamics and forecasts, interest rate model updates and projections, the transmission of macro developments through the mortgage market, stress testing, and issues related to mortgage risks and cash flows. Fout is responsible for driving market insights and has piloted public releases of Fannie Mae data, such as the newly released Refinance Application-Level Index and Fannie Mae Home Price Index. Fout and the economic forecast team were recent recipients of the 2022 Lawrence R. Klein Award for Blue Chip Forecast Accuracy, recognizing the strength of the 2018-2021 forecasts and smallest average error of predictions of GDP, inflation, and unemployment compared to other industry forecasts. Prior to joining the Economic & Strategic Research group, Fout worked in the Underwriting and Pricing division of Fannie Mae focusing on issues related to credit risk. In this role, he had primary responsibility for tracking and reporting on regional risks within Fannie Mae’s credit portfolio, developing property-level and loan-level risk models, and monitoring and evaluating portfolio-level risks and opportunities for the company’s Single-Family book of business. Prior to joining Fannie Mae, Fout worked as an assistant professor at Kansas State University, where he taught econometrics and undergraduate and graduate-level macro courses. Fout’s recently published research focused on interest rate spreads, mortgage performance, severity, and collateral valuation. Fout received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of North Carolina and a B.S. in economics and business from Florida State University.
John Hunt President MarketNSight & ViaSearch		John Hunt is the Chief Analyst and Principal of MarketNsight, providing market analysis for 35 markets across the Southeast. With over 30 years’ experience in the housing industry, his emphasis has been on both qualitative and quantitative analysis which has led to extremely accurate modeling and forecasting. John was part of the team that predicted the 2007 housing recession in September of 2005. John is on the leading edge of Millennial and Active Adult buying trends and was one of the first to signal housings “New Normal” where empty nesters took over as the largest group of new home buyers after the downturn. John also accurately predicted the dramatic loss of First Time Buyers after 2013 and tied it to the disappearance of distressed building lots. At the June 2019 MarketWatch Atlanta event, he was the first in the nation to call the bottom of the 2018/2019 housing collapse. In his recent analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic, John was the first in the nation to call a bottom in housing during the early weeks of the pandemic on April 21st, 2020. John is a highly sought-after speaker on the economy and real estate and is regularly quoted and published as a housing expert in local and national publications and news outlets, including CNN, FOX, Money INC, Bloomberg, Builder Magazine, The AJC and the Atlanta Business Chronicle. John is a regular speaker on the economy and real estate at the nationally covered Georgia State University Economic Forecasting Center and the largest semi-annual event for the Georgia Housing Industry (MarketWatch) since 2006. He has spoken at IBS every year since 2018.

Hamilton Fout
Vice President of Economic & Strategic Research
Fannie Mae

Hamilton Fout is Fannie Mae’s Vice President of Economic & Strategic Research, reporting to the Senior Vice President and Chief Economist. Fout is responsible for providing the forecasts of loan volumes and profiles to various business units of Fannie Mae. Fout is an important source of information regarding regional housing risks, home price dynamics and forecasts, interest rate model updates and projections, the transmission of macro developments through the mortgage market, stress testing, and issues related to mortgage risks and cash flows. Fout is responsible for driving market insights and has piloted public releases of Fannie Mae data, such as the newly released Refinance Application-Level Index and Fannie Mae Home Price Index. Fout and the economic forecast team were recent recipients of the 2022 Lawrence R. Klein Award for Blue Chip Forecast Accuracy, recognizing the strength of the 2018-2021 forecasts and smallest average error of predictions of GDP, inflation, and unemployment compared to other industry forecasts.

Prior to joining the Economic & Strategic Research group, Fout worked in the Underwriting and Pricing division of Fannie Mae focusing on issues related to credit risk. In this role, he had primary responsibility for tracking and reporting on regional risks within Fannie Mae’s credit portfolio, developing property-level and loan-level risk models, and monitoring and evaluating portfolio-level risks and opportunities for the company’s Single-Family book of business.

Prior to joining Fannie Mae, Fout worked as an assistant professor at Kansas State University, where he taught econometrics and undergraduate and graduate-level macro courses.

Fout’s recently published research focused on interest rate spreads, mortgage performance, severity, and collateral valuation. Fout received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of North Carolina and a B.S. in economics and business from Florida State University.

John Hunt
President
MarketNSight & ViaSearch
JohnHunt

John Hunt is the Chief Analyst and Principal of MarketNsight, providing market analysis for 35 markets across the Southeast. With over 30 years’ experience in the housing industry, his emphasis has been on both qualitative and quantitative analysis which has led to extremely accurate modeling and forecasting. John was part of the team that predicted the 2007 housing recession in September of 2005. John is on the leading edge of Millennial and Active Adult buying trends and was one of the first to signal housings “New Normal” where empty nesters took over as the largest group of new home buyers after the downturn. John also accurately predicted the dramatic loss of First Time Buyers after 2013 and tied it to the disappearance of distressed building lots.

At the June 2019 MarketWatch Atlanta event, he was the first in the nation to call the bottom of the 2018/2019 housing collapse. In his recent analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic, John was the first in the nation to call a bottom in housing during the early weeks of the pandemic on April 21st, 2020.

John is a highly sought-after speaker on the economy and real estate and is regularly quoted and published as a housing expert in local and national publications and news outlets, including CNN, FOX, Money INC, Bloomberg, Builder Magazine, The AJC and the Atlanta Business Chronicle. John is a regular speaker on the economy and real estate at the nationally covered Georgia State University Economic Forecasting Center and the largest semi-annual event for the Georgia Housing Industry (MarketWatch) since 2006. He has spoken at IBS every year since 2018.

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February 2024 Industry Speakers