ICE Mortgage Monitor

First-Time Homebuyers Make Up Record 47% of GSE Purchase Loans, 39% of All GSE Securitizations in 2023 - Seite 2

Demand in the mortgage market continues to closely follow rate movements and remains largely purchase driven. With interest rates averaging 6.6% for the month according to the ICE US Conforming 30-year Fixed Mortgage Rate Lock Index, rate/term refinances – which have been effectively nonexistent for some time – made up 24% of January refinance activity, the highest such share in nearly two years.

“We noted last month that if industry rate projections hold firm, we could see a mini surge of refi activity around the 2023 vintage by the end of 2024,” Walden continued. “Even the relatively slight rate pullbacks of December and January spurred a growing number of homeowners to refinance. Demand is clearly there when rates cross certain thresholds and, if current rate forecasts hold true, we expect that demand to increase throughout the year. Unfortunately, when it comes to retaining the business of refinancing homeowners, the industry has a lot of ground to make up. Servicers retained just one of every five such borrowers in Q4 2024, a 17-year low.

“Providing an exemplary servicing experience is critical to reversing this trend, as is effectively identifying and engaging with customers likely to refinance. And when they have the opportunity to serve that customer, lenders need to be sure the front-end of the process is smooth as well. To that point, we did see the number of days from rate lock to close hit a 4.5 year low in January. In addition to enhancing the consumer experience, that also reduces hedging timelines. Those dynamics are tied tightly to the rate environment and can turn on a dime. Should rates fall, and the market shifts more heavily to refis, hedging times could increase as well – raising associated hedge duration risk. Industry participants would do well to develop a deep understanding the complexities of this evolving market to capitalize on opportunity and minimize risk.”

Much more information on these and other topics can be found in this month’s Mortgage Monitor.

About Mortgage Monitor

ICE manages the nation’s leading repository of loan-level residential mortgage data and performance information covering the majority of the overall market, including tens of millions of loans across the spectrum of credit products and more than 160 million historical records. The combined insight of the ICE Home Price Index and Collateral Analytics’ home price and real estate data provides one of the most complete, accurate and timely measures of home prices available, covering 95% of U.S. residential properties down to the ZIP-code level. In addition, the company maintains one of the most robust public property records databases available, covering 99.9% of the U.S. population and households from more than 3,100 counties.