Quarterly home-lending volume fell to the lowest level since 2014. Growth in purchase financing, meanwhile, slowed.
From Jan. 1, 2017, through March 31, American mortgage originators generated $372 billion in first-lien loan production.
The first quarter turned out to be the slowest three-month period for mortgage lenders since the final quarter of 2014.
Black Knight Financial Services revealed the statistics in its April 2017 Mortgage Monitor report.
Home-lending activity
plummeted from the fourth quarter of last year, when 2.080 million loans were closed for $559 billion.
Business was also lower than in the first-quarter 2016, when total production was around $409 billion.
Approximate refinances made up $167 billion of first-quarter 2017 originations, sinking from $299 billion three months earlier and down from $209 billion one year earlier.
Refinance production among borrowers with credit scores of at least 740 fell 50 percent between the fourth-quarter 2016 and the first-quarter 2017. But among borrowers with scores less than 700, refinances were off just 24 percent.
Refinance share
thinned to 45 percent during the latest period from 54 percent in the final-three months of last year and 51 percent in the first-three months of 2016.
Loans used to finance a home purchase approximated $205 billion in the first-three months of 2017. Purchase production retreated from $260 billion in the fourth-quarter 2016 but ascended from $199 billion in the first-quarter 2016.
Black Knight noted that while year-over-year growth in purchase-money lending has exceeded 10 percent for nine consecutive quarters, it fell to just 3 percent during the latest period — the second-lowest growth rate since the start of the housing recovery.
