The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. was responsible for a drop in monthly refinances of government-sponsored enterprise residential loans. It was the sixth month in a row of declines.
Retail loan originators generated 116,882 refinances of single-family loans that are owned or backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during May.
That was the lowest number of GSE refinances
since May 2014, when there were 107,320 Fannie and Freddie mortgages refinanced.
Those details were delivered Tuesday by the
Federal Housing Finance Agency, which serves both as regulator and conservator for the pair of GSEs.
Volume was down from 117,956 transactions in April 2017 and has retreated each month since November 2016, when the total was 255,329. In the same month last year, production came to 173,214.
Refinances of Freddie Mac loans were down 4 percent from the preceding month to 43,671 in May 2017.
But refinances of Fannie Mae mortgages
inched up nearly a percent to 73,211.
Overall activity included 3,291 loans refinanced through the Home Affordable Refinance Program. HARP volume declined from 3,493 in April 2017 and 6,091 in May 2016.
HARP production amounted to 3,467,881 transactions since
the program launched in April 2009.
