A 15 percent improvement in projected purchase production and 5 percent rise in refinance originations has the forecast for this year’s overall residential loan originations $100 billion higher that was estimated just last month.
The first quarter is expected to close out at $340 billion in U.S. home-loan production, the same as was predicted last month.
But the projection for second-quarter business was lifted to $355 billion from $335 billion.
For the entire year, Freddie Mac’s outlook for mortgage volume is $1.250 trillion. In the February forecast, $1.150 trillion in annual originations was predicted by the secondary lender.
Refinances are expected to account for $825 billion of 2012 fundings, up from $782 billion projected in the prior report. Refinance share, however, was cut to two-thirds from 68 percent last month.
The purchase financing forecast was raised to $425 billion from $368 billion.
Freddie even raised its estimate of last year’s production — to $1.390 trillion from $1.350 trillion.
The latest outlook for 2013 business is $1.070 trillion, up from $1.020 trillion forecasted in February. The improvement reflects an increase in the estimate of refinance share to 60 percent from one-half in the previous outlook.
