A monthly decline in refinances of loans backed by Freddie Mac pulled down overall government-sponsored enterprise refinancings.
Residential loan originators refinanced a total of 130,076 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac home loans during the month of February.
GSE refinance activity was down from January, when 132,269 loans were refinanced. Volume has fallen each month since November.
The data was reported by the two companies’ regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
Refinance volume has tumbled versus February 2015, when the total was 188,453.
Refinances of Fannie mortgages increased to 79,528 from 77,436 in January.
But the gain at Fannie was more than offset by a decline at Freddie, to 50,548 during February from 54,833.
FHFA indicated that there were 6,424 mortgages refinanced through the Home Affordable Refinance Program,
more than the 6,239 HARP transactions the prior month.
HARP volume was much lower, though, than the 10,673 refinances completed through the program a year earlier.
Since the inception of HARP in April 2009, there have been 3,393,217 loans refinanced through the program.
