IT IS SEPTEMBER AND THAT MEANS it is data release season. One of the most important September data releases for me is the annual HMDA data release.
These data provide the closest thing to a publicly-available comprehensive summary of U.S. mortgage market activity that we’ll get (for right now). The recently released data is for 2016 and provides a detailed view of mortgage market activity across the country. Let’s take a look.
I’ll likely have much more to say about these data (see for example this post from last year), but let me just post a quick summary infographic.
Researchers at the Federal Reserve have released useful summary data that we can grab (see Bulletin report (pdf) and .xslx spreadsheet). The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau also releases useful tools, but we’ll look at the more detailed data later. For now, let’s just look at aggregate trends.
U.S. Single-Family Mortgage Market Trends
The graphic below summarizes aggregate U.S. single-family mortgage origination trends.
There’s a whole lot going on this graph.
Purchase mortgage originations grinding higher
The top left panel shows home purchase mortgage origination trends. Much like housing starts and home sales purchase mortgage originations are grinding higher after a sharp decline during the Great Recession. We’re looking at dollar volumes here, so much of increase is due to increased home prices.
Refinance volumes holding up
The top right panel shows refinance mortgage origination trends. Due to low mortgage rates, mortgage refinance activity has held up.
Total origination volume tops $2 Trillion in 2016
If we aggregate over 2016, adding purchase and refinance originations together total volume topped $2 Trillion. The bottom panel shows monthly single-family mortgage origination volumes.
More to come
The release of the HMDA data provides a wealth of information about the U.S. mortgage market. We have only looked at aggregate trends, but by looking at disaggregated data we can learn quite a bit more. Keep a look out here for more to come.