Clusters of VA Mortgage Originations in the US

VA mortgages are originated in areas where you might not expect. The map in the image shows the counts of new VA mortgages by county in continental U.S. from January 2008 through June 2008. Most of the time the most mortgages of a particular type is in counties with the largest populations (e.g. Los Angeles). For VA mortgages, the leading counties include Bexar Texas, El Paso Colorado, Cumberland North Carolina. The counties near those leading VA counties also have high numbers of VA mortgage originations. This shows that the VA mortgages are originated in geographic clusters.

Eventually the high population counties will see more VA mortgages as sources for mortgage financing become more difficult in the conventional mortgage market space.

Rapidly Growing Chicago FHA Market Continues in August

The rapid growth of the FHA market (and the rapid decrease of the Conforming market) continued in August. Below are two charts that show the rapid increase in FHA Purchase originations and rapid decrease in $Conforming Purchase originations in Chicago through August 2008.

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Will there be a Conforming market left in September?

Maricopa County, Arizona Leading in FHA Volume

Take a look at the leading counties for FHA dollar volume year-to-date through July 2008. Maricopa county is showing tremendous growth this year. The chart below shows their month by month growth in originations.

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What lender has the largest market share in this growing market? Countrwide is #1 through July 2008, take a look at their growth in market share in the chart below.

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MortgageDataWeb has the Mortgage Data on Institutions Missing from 2007 HMDA Data

Many mortgage companies who went bankrupt in 2007 and failed to disclose their 2007 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data. These same mortgage lenders originated a significant amount of new mortgages in 2007 until they closed down business operations. Researchers in residential finance use HMDA data to analyze mortgage lending activity. When using the 2007 HMDA data, researchers will need to make adjustments in their analysis to account for the significant quantity of mortgage activity that is missing from the data.

MortgageDataWeb has mortgage lending data collected from municipal recordings. Some examples of bankrupt mortgage institutions who did not report their 2007 data are provided here along with the metropolitan areas where their loans were originated. The company reports show the mortgage company's originations and market share in the metropolitan areas they operated in. These companies had a substantial market share in the markets they operated in until the time they stopped funding new mortgages in 2007.

Click the Links Below to view the mortgage orgination data by metropolitan area for the companies below:

New Century Mortgage of Irvine, California originated nearly 17,000 conventional mortgages ($3.6 billion) until they stopped business in March 2007.

American Home Mortgage (including American Brokers Conduit) of Melville, New York originated over 71,000 conventional mortgages ($18.8 billion) until they shut down in August 2007.

First Magnus Financial of Tucson, Arizona originated roughly 54,000 conventional mortgages ($11,7 billion) until they closed their doors in August.

There is so much more missing from 2007 HMDA! Where are you going to find that mortgage data?

2007 HMDA Information Misses Data from Many Insititutions

Many mortgage companies exited the business during 2007. Those mortgage companies originated mortgages in 2007 however we did not find their loan application register information in the 2007 HMDA data. We listed what we found to be the top 15 mortgage missing companies in the 2007 HMDA data. The number of mortgages and dollar amounts of mortgages are the confidential purchase and refinance mortgages those companies originated in 2006.

Click image to enlarge report

Suntrust Rising Fast in July

Suntrust Mortgage's share of the Atlanta FHA market is rising fast. The depth of the Atlanta FHA market is also one of the largest in the country. The chart below shows Suntrust growth in FHA market share over the last 12 months through July 2008.

Click on the image below for a larger view of the chart.

Interested in finding out who are the fast risers in Atlanta and other markets? Contact MortgageDataWeb now.

FHA Refis Drop in July

Today, let us take a look at FHA Refinance originations nationally. The chart below shows the upward trend over many months since the passage of the Economic Stimulus Package. However, the Refi originations dipped slightly in July 2008. Is this a sign of a trend or will the numbers bounce up again? Check back in a few weeks for the August results.

2007 HMDA Data shows Decline in Rate Spread Reportable Mortgages

Since 2004, any mortgage having an annual percentage interest rate exceeding the rate on treasury securities of comparable maturity by a threshold (3% for first lien and 5% for subordinate lien) must be reported in the lender's annual Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data submission. All reported mortgages having annual percentage rates below the HMDA rate spread threshold will not include a rate spread value in the lender's annual HMDA data submission.

The HMDA data was examined from 2007 back to 2004 to determine the proportion of mortgages showing a reportable rate spread value (higher cost loans) to mortgages not having the rate spread value (lower cost loans). The regulators desired having rate spread values that exceeded a threshold because they believed that this enabled them to have greater monitoring of the sub-prime segment of the mortgage market while removing the reporting burden from mortgages believed to be seperate from the sub-prime segment of the mortgage market.

In the examination of the data for this post, we only included first lien conventional purchase and first lien conventional refinance mortgages on owner occupied 1-4 family dwellings. Normally lenders charged higher interest rates on non-owner occupied home loans and lenders also charged higher interest rates on manufactured housing. Mortgages with dollar conforming amounts were compared to each other and mortgages having jumbo dollar amounts were also compared. Lenders typically charge higher rates for mortgages exceeded the conforming loan limits. HMDA data provides very few data items to help compare mortgage loans of similar risks to investors but the criteria used to compare mortgages in this study help show relations of mortgages with similar risk factors.

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The chart shows that in 2007 there was a substantial reduction in the proportion of rate spread reportable mortgages. From 2004 to 2006 there were rapidly rising proportions of mortgages having HMDA reportable rate spreads.

One surprise (at least too me) was that the proportion of rate spread reportable mortgages was always higher for the mortgages having loan amounts within the conforming loan limits as compared to the proportion of jumbo mortgages having rate spread reportable mortgages. We assumed that jumbo mortgage amounts added risks and typically carried higher rates. Given that jumbo mortgages carried higher rates, we might expect that to flow to higher rates of rate spread reportable mortgages for the jumbo segment. Not so!

2007 HMDA Data Shows GSE Share Increased

It is not a surprise but now we measure the share of conventional mortgages purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs). The HMDA data shows that the GSE share increased from 19% in 2006 to 28% in 2007. This is the first year of share increase for GSE purchases of conventional mortgages since 2003.

According to the HMDA data, the GSE purchased 2.1 million mortgages in 2007. The mortgage amounts were $433 billion. These are the lowest numbers in more years than we have data for. 2007 was a bad year for the mortgage industry. 2008 is worse! What will 2009 bring?

Who is Getting WaMu's Market Share?

Today's (18 Sept. 2008) news that WaMu seems to be searching for a buyer presents some interesting questions when analyzing the 2008 market share data. Take a look at the chart below for the State of California.

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Even though WaMu's market share has decreased significantly this year, they still have almost 1% of the California Conventional Purchase market as of July. Wells Fargo and Citi are rumored potential buyers. If it is Wells Fargo, WaMu's market share may be enough to keep them in a strong position in California. See the chart below for the current market share of Wells.

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To see a complete market share report for California, contact MortgageDataWeb.

FHA Endorsement Volume to be Impacted by the End of Down Payment Assistance

Borrowers for roughly 35 percent of all FHA purchase money mortgages utilized down payment assistance from non profit organizations. As of October 1, 2008 borrowers will no longer be able to obtain seller assisted down payments coming through non profits. Unless a new law reinstates down payment assistance by non profits for FHA mortgages, a large proportion of FHA mortgages will be eliminated. We expect that the recent increases in FHA mortgages will be halted. This might be a temporary situation but it should be visible in our charting of the mortgage data.

Do the mortgagees need down payment assistance to stay in business?

2007 HMDA Data Findings - Bank of America to Dominate National Mortgage Market!

The 2007 HMDA data was released last Thursday. MortgageDataWeb has already published market share reports for all areas of the nation.

When we look at the list of the top 100 hundred conventional mortgage lenders, it has so many mortgage institutions that are on the "Mortgage Implode" web site.

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Here we are publishing the top 10 conventional mortgage lenders for 2007 and 2006. You can contact MortgageDataWeb.com to order the top 100.

Some findings are that in 2007, there were roughly 3.4 million fewer conventional purchase and refinance mortgages as compared with 2006.

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The conventional purchase and refinance origination dollar volume declined from $2.37 trillion in 2006 to $1.82 trillion in 2007.

One interesting mortgage company gainer in 2007 (if you want to call then a gainer) was Indymac Bank. Indymac moved from 11th position in 2006 to 9th place in 2007. Indymac increased their market share from 1.52% to 2.11% in 2007 and Indymac increased their mortgage origination volume from $36 billion to $38.54 billion. Lottagooditdidum!

Bank of America did really well in 2007 without having Countrywide on their team. Bank of America's mortgage originations grew by $20 billion in 2007 over 2006. Bank of America's market share increased from 3.38% to 5.38%. Assume that Countrywide and Bank of America maintain the same market share in 2008 as they have had in 2007, then the addition of Countrywide to Bank of America will result in a mortgage market share exceeding 15%.

I'll make a prediction that Bank of America will exceed 20% market share (1 of every 5 dollars of new mortgages) going forward in 2009. You can make your predictions here and we will report the results.

DC FHA Originations Triple!

Many of the high-cost real estate markets have seen a tremendous growth in FHA originations since the raising of the loan ceilings earlier this year. The Washington DC Metro area is one such area. The chart below shows the growth in mortgage orginations from August 2007 through July 2008.

Click on the image below for a larger view of the chart.

To see who is leading in this growing market, see the chart below.

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Who is Gaining in Las Vegas?

As was discussed in an earlier post in this blog, there is a significant growth over the last few months (through July 2008) in FHA originations in Las Vegas. See the chart below.

Click on the chart to see a larger image.

Who is taking advantage of this shift? One such lender is Countrywide Bank. Take a look at the chart below to see their growth in market share through July 2008.

Click on the chart below to see a larger image.

Universal American is one lender who may be paying the price for this increased competition. Below is another chart that shows their overall decline in market share from August 2007 through July 2008.

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Check back to see if this trend continues.

Opportunities in Stockton,CA

Over the last year, we have seen many reports that Stockton, California is ground zero for the foreclosure mess. I decided to take a look to see if the FHA programs put in place last year have helped Stockton rebound at all.

Take a look at the chart below and click for a larger image.

As you can see from this chart, the FHA loan originations have increased dramatically since the beginning of this year. One lender that seems to be taking advantage of this opportunity is Wells Fargo.

Click on the chart below for a larger image.

Any other guesses on who else is taking advantage of this opportunity of getting homeowners who are struggling into more affordable products?

Re-aligned Mortgage Market of Woodbridge Virginia

Woodbridge, a bedroom community of Prince William County Virginia is home to roughly 12,000 households. Subdivisions such as Lake Ridge, Dale City, Rippon Landings have many homes financed with FHA mortgages during the 1970s through the 1990s. After 2003 homeowners overlooked FHA for financing home purchases.

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As of this year, the trend has revered. FHA mortgages are approaching the same numbers as conventional mortgages to finance home purchases in Woodbridge, VA. If the realignment rate of mortgage products continue, we can expect to see FHA mortgages used more than conventional mortgages in Woodbridge within several months.

Weststar Mortgage, who coincidentally is headquartered in Woodbridge, succeeded in grabbing a large market share of the FHA mortgages in Woodbridge. Westar Mortgage happened to be ranked first in all of Prince William County for FHA purchase mortgages in the first half 2007. During that period, Weststar only originated 6 FHA purchase mortgages and all lenders originated 61. Now those numbers are surpassed in a single month just within Woodbridge. This reveals another big positive change in an otherwise dismal mortgage and housing market.

Mortgage Master Grows Market Share and Sales in Massachusetts

Mortgage Master, Inc., of Walpole, Mass. outperforms its prior years in shares and market share growth even in the miserable housing and mortgage market.

Click the thumbnail image for a Real Report and Chart options



In prior years Mortgage Master did not originate many FHA nor VA mortgages. Now Mortgage Master fourth in Massachusetts for FHAVA mortgages. They should move up to third soon given that First Tennessee has sold off its First Horizon Mortgage unit to MetLife Bank.


Click the thumbnail image for a Real Report and Chart options







Mortgage Master is on pace to pass last year's conventional mortgage originations. They doubled their market share this year and moved from tenth to eighth place in Massachusetts for conventional mortgage originations.

Who else performs this well despite the dismal mortgage environment?

FHA Originations Continue to Grow!

The FHA monthly purchase originations grew to 83,005 nationally in July 2008. This is an increase of over 10,000 from the June 2008 total of 72,613. Take a look at the accompanying chart to see the month-by-month trend over the last year.

The economic stimulus package continues to have an impact on FHA loans. Can we expect a similar increase in August? Check our blog again for the results.

FHA Refinances Mostly Replacing Non Dilinquent Conventional Mortgages

FHA Secure enables conventional mortgage borrowers refinance into FHA mortgages and obtain better loan terms. If the conventional mortgage borrower was current with their mortgage payments prior rate increases on adjustable mortgages they can qualify for the FHA secure refinance. If the borrower has trouble making payments and has been delinquent following interest rate increases they still may qualify.


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The data shows that for the quarter ending June 2008, FHA endorsed roughly $26 billion of FHA refinance mortgages. Nearly $20 billion (76%) of that total was to refinance conventional mortgages for borrowers who were current on their loans. $6 billion (23%) refinance mortgages replaced existing FHA mortgages with new FHA mortgages. The remainder (1%) refinanced existing conventional mortgages having delinqencies into new FHA mortgages. There were 146, 436 mortgages endorsed in the period. The average mortgage amount of these refinance mortgages was $177,000.

Ameripro Funding #7 and Falling!

Ameripro Funding from Austin, Texas is the #7 ranked lender for FHA Refi business in Austin-Round Rock for the last 12 months through June 2008. However, their market share percentage is trending down in a growing market (FHA Refinance in Austin). Take a look at the accompanying chart to see their market share trend. Any guesses for who is stealing their market share?

Check back to this blog in a couple days for some answers.