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| Monthly mortgage insurance activity fell, was less than half the prior year’s level and is headed lower. But defaults improved.Mortgage insurers wrote 49,476 policies for $9.9 billion in March, the Mortgage Insurance Companies of America reported today. Unit volume fell from 56,216 policies in February, but dollar volume increased from $8.5 billion.
Volume, however, was less than half the 139,610 mortgage insurance policies for $20.5 billion issued in March 2008. Last month’s activity included 44 bulk policies for less than $0.1 billion. So far during 2009, 165,261 mortgage insurance policies have been written for $25.5 billion. New business is likely to continue declining based the 68,555 applications for policies received in March; during February, 73,109 applications were received and 160,139 were received a year earlier. Primary insurance in force fell to $937.1 billion on March 31 from $944.9 billion on Feb. 28. The figure was higher, however, than $848.1 billion 12 months earlier. One bright spot was primary insurance defaults, which fell to 84,042 from February’s 89,722. Defaults were 58,131 in March 2008. Primary insurance cures increased to 69,931 in March from 67,767 the previous month and 50,585 the previous year. |
