Dive Brief:

• Mortgage lenders will ease their standards over the next few years in an effort to help more consumers qualify for home loans, but that won’t necessarily translate into a greater number of housing sales.

• That’s the finding of Zillow’s latest quarterly Price Expectations Survey, in which 44% of 100 housing experts predicted the growth of renter households will continue to outpace homeowner households—mostly because of financial barriers like large amounts of debt and slow wage growth.

• Still, 60% said they expect regulations governing lending policies to loosen, which would make it easier for potential homebuyers to qualify for mortgages. In fact, 7% of the experts on the Zillow panel complained that mortgage lending is already too lax, while 47% called it “too restrictive.” Another 46% said the lending rules are “about right.”

Dive Insight:

42% of the experts predicted that as the economy improves and the cost of renting a home continues to increase, more tenants will opt to buy instead of rent over the next one to two years.

Their challenge: saving enough for the down payment. Zillow Chief Economist Stan Humphries noted in a release: "They need enough money on hand to start to buy homes. Even as mortgage credit becomes easier to obtain and home prices level off, renters are confronted with slow income growth and high rental rates. In addition, they face sometimes fierce competition for very few available homes in the market."