It has been more than two years since the amount of first mortgages outstanding has been this high. Home-equity products, however, saw a decline.
First mortgages outstanding as of this month amounted to $7.97 trillion. It was the highest balance for aggregate outstandings since December 2011.
The U.S. book of business was up from $7.9 trillion previously reported in last month’s report.
The latest figure was nearly 3 percent more than in the same month last year — the largest year-over-year increase since September 2008.
The information came from Equifax for its National Consumer Credit Trends Report.
The 30-day delinquency rate was 5.65 percent. Equifax said that was more than a fifth better than in March 2013.
Loans that were 90 days late or in foreclosure accounted for less than $270 billion of the total. That was a 27 percent improvement from a year earlier.
“The decline in mortgage balances from accelerated amortization and foreclosure write-offs has finally been overcome by increases in mortgage debt due to home purchase lending,” Equifax Chief Economist Amy Crews Cutts said in the report. “This trend should gain additional momentum as we head into the spring and summer home buying seasons, which increases the volume of new loans coming in, while at the same time rising home values and improving employment conditions should push down the incidence of mortgage defaults.”
There were $134.2 billion in closed-end home-equity loans outstanding, off 2.4 percent over the past year.
HELs in foreclosure totaled $0.424 billion, while $3.54 billion in HELs were at least 90 days past due or in foreclosure.
As of last month, the total balance of home equity revolving loans was $485.3 billion, down 6.8 percent on a year-earlier basis.
Home-equity lines of credit had $90.5 billion in the total limit of new credit through December 2013 — 15.7 percent more than the prior-year number and the highest in seven years.
The number of new HELOCs was 1.05 million.
Equifax said that the principal balances on severely delinquent HELOCs fell 16 percent over the past year to $8.3 billion in February. It hasn’t been that low since January 2008.
