A report from Market Watch. "The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-city index rose a seasonally adjusted 0.1% in March, compared to February, and was 2.7% higher compared to a year ago. That was the slowest pace of annual growth since August 2012."

"'Given the broader economic picture, housing should be doing better,' said David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee. 'Mortgage rates are at 4% for a 30-year fixed-rate loan, unemployment is close to a 50-year low, low inflation and moderate increases in real incomes would be expected to support a strong housing market. Measures of household debt service do not reveal any problems and consumer sentiment surveys are upbeat. The difficulty facing housing may be too-high price increases.'"

The Wall Street Journal. "'Compared with previous snapback in mortgage rates, it hasn’t been nearly the impact or the response by buyers or sellers that we would have expected,' said Zillow economic analyst Matthew Speakman. 'It’s a bit perplexing given the strength of the economy.'"

From Inman News. "'Home price gains continue to slow,' David M. Blitzer, chairman of the index committee said. 'The patterns seen in the last year or more continue: year-over-year price gains in most cities are consistently shrinking. Double-digit annual gains have vanished. The shift to smaller price increases is broad-based and not limited to one or two cities where large price increases collapsed.'"

"'House prices have risen consistently over the last 31 quarters,' Dr. William Doerner, supervisory economist at FHFA said. Although price growth is still positive, the upward pace is softening across the country, especially among states with the largest supplies of housing.'"

From Realtor.com. "A federal crackdown on certain no-money-down home loan programs may hurt thousands of cash-strapped home buyers. Concerned about risky mortgages reminiscent of the housing bust, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently called for national groups to stop lending down payments to home buyers seeking Federal Housing Administration loans."

"Buyers who don't pony up a down payment are more likely to default on their loans, and FHA loans require qualified buyers to put down as little as 3.5% of the purchase price. In April, home list prices reached a record median $310,000 nationally, according to realtor.com® data. That's led about 30% of buyers today to tap into some sort of down-payment assistance program, according to the Urban Institute policy research group."

"Former FHA head Ed Golding, now an adviser to the Urban Institute, says HUD is correct to rein in national down-payment groups. He and the feds aren't as concerned with community-based housing programs that provide assistance to much smaller numbers of local buyers. After all, the housing crisis a decade ago was set off when buyers who weren't able to afford their loans began defaulting on them."

"'You don't want the allow the riskier part of the market to hurt what is important,'" says Golding."