There have been a lot of developments in the mortgage market so far this year – some good and some bad.
Let’s start with the good news.
Mortgage companies now dominate the market for home loans, originating the vast majority of deals that are then sold to the big government financing agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or directly to the Federal Housing Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Now for the bad news.
Mortgage companies may be the dominant players in the home finance market, but, for now anyway, it is a shrinking market as rising interest rates shut down home sales and lending activity.
Let’s stick with some more good news – for mortgage companies that is – for another second here.
Nonbank lenders now account for 86 percent of government-backed mortgages, and 71 percent of loans backed by government agencies like the VA, according to Inside Mortgage numbers cited by Axios.
As customers have yanked deposits out of small and medium-sized banks, the market share of mortgage companies has probably only grown, according to Axios.
“Over the last month, I think it’s begun to accelerate,” BTIG analyst Eric Hagen told Axios.
Not that banks are out of the picture – hardly. Banks continue to dominate the market for jumbo mortgages, an increasingly important category as home prices have surged over the past two decades in the Boston area and other fast-growing metro markets.
The bad news, of course, is that the overall market for mortgages – both on the purchase and refinancing side – has contracted as the Federal Reserve has jacked up rates in its battle to bring down inflation.
Total mortgage originations plunged by a stunning 83 percent between March 2021 and this January, according to Axios. And the volume of mortgage refinancing has taken an even bigger hit.
Credit has tightened up to such an extent that a reasonable easing of standards would yield a million more loans a year, Axios notes, citing the Urban Institute.
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