MBA: Commercial, Multifamily Originations Sluggish

According to a recent quarterly ""report"":http://www.mortgagebankers.org/files/Research/DataBooks/1Q11QuarterlyDatabook.pdf released by the ""Mortgage Bankers Association"":http://www.mbaa.org/default.htm (MBA), commercial and multifamily originations slowed to a rate 25 percent lower in the quarter this year than the fourth quarter in 2010, with every major investor group reporting considerable new activity.

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Titled the Commercial Real Estate/Multifamily Finance Quarterly Data Book, the report documented new signs of life in the economy, denoting $7.8 billion in profits for mortgage commitments, the highest in the first quarter in three years, reflective of a 60-percent increase from the first quarter last year.

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Issuers of mortgage-backed securities made $11.6 billion in new bonds, with origination volume roughly the same relative to increases and decreases in overall loan volume, not even denting the aggregate amount of commercial/multifamily mortgage debt outstanding. First-quarter data showed $2.377 trillion in mortgage debt outstanding trending at $3 billion, or 0.1 percent, less than the same data at the end of the fourth quarter, according to the report.

""Transaction volumes are picking up, and pricing and loan performance are showing initial signs - inconsistent though they are - of improvement,"" the ""MBA"":http://www.mbaa.org/default.htm says in its report. ""Any pickup in economic growth will speed the healing; any slowdown will draw out the cycle.""

The ""MBA"":http://www.mbaa.org/default.htm added that restraint in the supply helped stabilize the market, whose recovery relies in no small part on the rate of economic growth and reactions by developers to new and sudden trends.

The Data Book supplies consumers and investors with an analysis of first-quarter property sales, originations, delinquencies, and mortgage debt outstanding, according to ""Mortgage Orb"":http://www.mortgageorb.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.9089.

The ""MBA"":http://www.mbaa.org/default.htm represents mortgage bankers nationwide.