The volume of mortgages insured last month by Radian Group Inc. eased from December. But compared to a year prior, volume nearly doubled. Delinquency, however, improved from one month earlier and 12 months earlier.
The mortgage insurance company wrote $2.0 billion in new policies during January, according to operational data released Tuesday.
Business slipped from $2.3 billion the previous month.
But the Philadelphia-based firm nearly doubled its activity compared to January 2011, when just $1.1 billion in insurance was written.
Based on the most-recent available data previously reported by the mortgage insurer, Mortgage Daily estimates that Radian had around 713,000 policies in force as of Jan. 31, 2012, down from an estimated 717,000 policies outstanding as of the end of last year and 757,000 at the same point in 2011.
In today’s report, Radian said that the number of delinquent loans fell to 109,803 from December’s 110,861 past-due mortgages. A prior report indicated that the number of delinquent loans was 125,389 as of Jan. 1, 2011.
Using today’s data from Radian and the estimates of outstanding policies by Mortgage Daily, it looks like the delinquency rate ended last month at roughly 15.40 percent, improving from 15.46 percent at the end of December.
A year prior, estimated delinquency was around 16.56 percent.
