Fannie Mae has made a modest upward adjustment in its forecast for industry-wide refinance originations this year and next year.
The secondary mortgage lender predicts that overall loan production, including purchases and refinances, will total $456 billion during the third quarter.
Home-lending activity is then expected to tumble to $377 billion in the final-three months of 2017 and $322 billion in the first-three months of next year.
The secondary lender made the predictions in its Housing Forecast: September 2017.
Fannie’s economists have grown more optimistic than in
last month’s outlook, when production was predicted to fall from $453 billion in the current quarter to $366 billion in the fourth quarter and $312 billion three months later.
Loans to finance a home purchase are expected to account for $306 billion of third-quarter originations and $263 billion of the following period’s production.
Refinances are projected to sink from $151 billion to $113 billion in the final quarter of this year. The outlook was raised from $146 billion for the current three-month period and $103 billion for fourth quarter.
The Washington-based company lifted its full-year overall 2017 outlook to $1.679 trillion from $1.666 trillion expected in the report from a month earlier, while next year’s projection grew to $1.578 trillion from $1.569 trillion.
Purchase-money production projected to climb from $1.078 trillion this year to $1.163 trillion in 2018.
The 2017 refinance outlook increased to $0.601 trillion from $0.586 trillion expected in August. Next year’s refinance forecast grew to $0.415 trillion from $0.405 trillion.
Refinance share is predicted to thin from 36 percent in the current year to 26 percent in 2018.
