San Diego Mortgage News

If you read about mortgages then you have probably heard about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  But not as many people know about Ellie Mae.  Ellie Mae is the leading provider of statistical data for the residential mortgage industry publishing the Origination Insight Report.   In short, she tells you the demographics or loans and whether loans are getting closed.  So what did she tell us this time?

1. People are buying houses rather than refinancing. Of the loans originated only 33% were for refinancing whereas 66% were for purchase loans. She also confirmed that almost 40% of Americans are still sitting on loans with higher than 6% interest rates which means they are certainly should be refinancing.
2. FHA (Federal Housing Authority) loans are being used almost solely for purchase mortgages. Only 19% of FHA loans originated were for refinances whereas conventional loans split 40% for refinances and 59% for purchase loans.
3. The most underutilized program in my opinion is the VA loan program as this was only tapped in 9% of loan originations. In a city like San Diego or Riverside where military populations are high we should expect this percentage to be much higher. The VA has great programs and I specialize in VA loans.
4. The most interesting, and telling information to a mortgage broker is the percentage of loans closed and that was only 57.8%. That means that more than 40% of people walked away from the table after their deal was dead. This is unacceptable in my view. There is rarely a time that you shouldn’t be able to close a deal once you have appropriately evaluated a clients financial standing and submitted their loan for origination. If you want to make sure your deal closes, call Ryan Grant at 619-542-7744.