The MReport Webcast: Tuesday 2/25/2015

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is still refinancing plenty of loans through Home Affordable Refinance Program ‒‒ in fact, more HARP refinances were done in December than in any other month of 2014 ‒‒ but HARP refinances are significantly down from a year ago, even if FHFA believes it has many more potential customers out there. FHFA found that that with 30-year fixed mortgage rates averaging about 3.86 percent, the number of loans refinanced through 2014 made up 14 percent of total refinances nationwide last year.

Throughout 2013, FHFA averaged about 275,000 transactions per quarter, the number of which steadily declined as the year progressed. The same pattern emerged in 2014, charting a further dropoff in HARP refinances ‒‒ a phenomenon FHFA has yet to offer a solid explanation for. In September, CoreLogic, looking at the steady erosion of HARP refinances, offered a possible explanation by saying that the national negative equity rate was down to 10.7 percent for all mortgaged homes at the time.

There’s good news and bad news for January’s existing-home sales, according to the National Association of Realtors. On the one hand, sales in January, for the fourth straight month, were ahead of the pace of sales a year ago. On the other hand, existing-home sales in all major regions declined last month to their lowest rate in nine months, with the West and Northeast getting the worst of it. The NAR’s latest look at existing-home sales shows that while sales nationally were 3.2 percent higher this January than last, single-family transactions were down almost 5 percent to 4.82 million..