This year’s spring homebuying season may not have been as strong as it has been traditionally, but it still provided a lift to the housing industry, according to Attom.
The company’s recently released second-quarter 2024 U.S. Residential Property Mortgage Origination Report revealed that there were 1.62 million residential mortgages issued in the second quarter. While that’s still down 1.6% from the second quarter of 2023 (and 61.2% lower than the recent high of 4.17 million loans reached in the first quarter of 2021), that’s still a 23.2% pickup over the preceding three-month period. The increase marked the first quarterly upswing in a year, pushing the count of residential mortgages at least close to the level of activity from the same point last year.
By loan count, purchase activity grew to roughly 783,000 loans, up 32.7% quarter over quarter. Refi deals were up 10.3%, rising to a count of about 546,000. Similar growth was observed on a metro level, with loan counts increasing in 98% of the country’s metropolitan areas with at least 200,000 people.
Among metros with at least 1 million people, Honolulu saw the biggest quarterly uptick in mortgages; residential loan count was up by 100.2% in Hawaii’s capital and largest city during the second quarter. Other major metros that had the largest quarterly jumps in total loans included San Jose (up 46%), Minneapolis (44.3%), Indianapolis (42.3%) and Boston (35.4%).
Rising prices helped push the total dollar volume of residential loans nationwide up to $533 billion in this year’s Q2, up 27.6% quarterly and 1.1% annually.
Any improvement in a down market is helpful, said Rob Barber, Attom’s CEO, though he warned against making any forward-looking projections from the transitory rebound. Reactions to the expected downward shift in rates during the fall will be more telling, Barber noted.
“The mortgage industry got one of its biggest boosts in years during the second quarter, supported by a combination of the usual springtime homebuyer demand coupled with more attractive mortgage rates,” Barber said. “However, a cautionary note is warranted, as we shouldn’t read too much into one great quarter.
“A similar trend occurred last spring, with lending dropping off significantly later in the year. But with interest rates settling down and projections for more cuts from the Federal Reserve over the coming months, it wouldn’t be surprising if business increased even more for lenders over the rest of 2024, or at least didn’t drop significantly.”
