Despite a reduction in purchase financing, overall quarterly home lending moved higher on a year-over-year basis.
Residential loan originations during the final-three months of last year amounted to 1.7 million loans for $461 billion.
Total production included loans used to finance a home purchase, refinance transactions and home-equity lines of credit.
Attom Data Solutions reported the statistics Thursday.
Business among the nation’s mortgage bankers retreated from 1.9 million loans for $502 billion in the third quarter.
But national mortgage production was up from the fourth-quarter 2015, when an upwardly revised 1.7 million loans were closed for $423 billion.
Included in the fourth-quarter 2016 total were 0.6 million purchase-money loans closed for $161 billion, falling from 0.7 million loans for $201 billion three months earlier and 0.7 million loans for $172 billion one year earlier.
Purchase financing has retreated from a year earlier for two consecutive quarters.
But despite the decline in purchase-money production, Attom Data Solutions Senior Vice President Daren Blomquist said refinances rose.
“Refinance originations continued to post strong numbers compared to a year ago in the fourth quarter even as purchase originations decreased on a year-over-year basis for the second consecutive quarter,” Blomquist stated in the report. “The increase in refinance originations is surprising given the rising interest rates in the fourth quarter, but many homeowners may have been trying to lock in still relatively low interest rates before those interest rates rose further.”
Full-year 2016 overall originations amounted to 7.3 million loans for $1.846 trillion. Activity accelerated from 7.2 million loans funded for $1.778 trillion in 2015.
Purchase transactions during all of last year accounted for roughly 2.8 million
units for $0.721 trillion.
