Although monthly refinances turned lower for Fannie Mae loans, the story was a different one at rival Freddie Mac.
During August, there were 131,075 Fannie and Freddie home loans that were refinanced. Activity moved up from 119,699 transactions the previous month.
But refinance volume has plummeted compared to the same month last year, when 302,370 government-sponsored enterprise loans were refinanced.
The data was reported by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates the pair of secondary lenders.
Despite the overall increase, refinances of Fannie loans fell to 73,037 from 75,520 in July.
But Freddie refinances surged to 58,038 in August from 44,179 a month earlier.
On a year-over-year basis, Fannie has seen refinances plunge 64 percent, while Freddie’s decline was just 42 percent.
Refinances processed for the Home Affordable Refinance Program fell to 14,066 from 15,671 a month earlier and 68,337 a year earlier.
HARP volume hasn’t been this slow since May 2009, when there were only 6,000 HARP transactions closed.
There have been 3,218,662 HARP refinances since the program launched in April 2009.
