New data on the volume of residential loans originated indicate that last year was the busiest for home lending in four years.
The total value of all U.S. single-family properties was $24.3 trillion in 2016. Homeowner equity, meanwhile, worked out to $14.0 trillion.
That left $10.3 trillion in mortgages outstanding as of last year.
Agency mortgage-backed securities made up $6.1 trillion, while $3.1 trillion was unsecuritized first liens.
Another $0.6 trillion was second liens, and $0.5 trillion was private-label securities.
Those findings were reported by the
Housing Finance Policy Center in its Housing Finance at at Glance.
The report indicated that first-lien mortgage originations came to around $2.1 trillion last year — more than any year since 2012.
Portfolio originations accounted for 31 percent of 2016 production, while government-sponsored enterprise share was 46 percent and government mortgage share was 23 percent. Less than 1 percent of lending activity was for private-label securities.
