Monday, September 23, 2013

Mortgage Movement

There were some very positive signs for the housing industry last week, starting with the fact that permits to build single-family homes reached their highest level since May 2008. With mortgage rates still at historic lows, mortgage lending has been booming as well. A new report from the Federal Reserve shows that mortgage origination reached a five-year high in 2012.

Part of that is the fact that we were starting from a very low base. There were 7.1 million mortgages originated in 2011, the lowest that figure had been in 16 years. The number jumped an impressive 38 percent in 2012, though, reaching a total of 9.8 million mortgages.

One thing driving that is refinancing existing mortgages. There were 6.6 million refinanced loans taken out in 2012, which was up 54 percent from 2011. That means about two-thirds of all mortgages in this country in 2012 were actually re-fis.

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