It looks like U.S. mortgage bankers closed 13 percent fewer loans last year than they did in 2010. Monthly volume was also lower.
Residential lenders originated 537,720 loans during November, according to the December Mortgage Monitor report from Lender Processing Services.
Volume was down from 597,888 mortgages funded in October.
LPS said that originations included first-lien purchase financing and refinance transactions. The data excluded home-equity loans.
During all of 2011, home-loan production was 6,146,576 loans, based on an analysis of LPS statistics. The total included the first 11 months as reported by LPS and a Mortgage Daily estimate of 530,385 loans closed during December.
Annual business was off from the prior year’s 7,100,000 mortgages originated.
Data from Mortgage Daily’s Origination Statistics table indicate that by dollar volume, total U.S. production fell to around $1.31 trillion last year from approximately $1.54 trillion in 2010.
