A total of 1.67 million mortgages were secured by residential property (1 to 4 units) during the third quarter, according to a data report from ATTOM. This marked 1.9% increases on both a quarterly and annual measurement.
Lenders issued $553.1 billion worth of residential mortgages in the third quarter, up 2.9% from the second quarter and 6.6% from the third quarter.
ATTOM attributed the upswing to improvements in refinance and home-equity lending, rather than a trend of more buyers taking out loans. Mortgage rollovers were up by 6.9% quarterly to about 588,000, while home-equity packages rose by 2.3% to approximately 297,000. In comparison, the quarterly difference for purchase loans was 1.7% decline to 782,000.
The largest quarterly increases in mortgage lending came in Anchorage, Alaska (total lending up 78.6% from the second quarter of 2024 to the third quarter of 2024), Yuma, Arizona (up 33.3%), Ann Arbor, Michigan (up 33%), Huntington, West Virginia (up 21%), and Trenton, New Jersey (up 20.5%).
“Mortgage lending rose again in the third quarter, but at a far slower pace than during the Spring of this year when activity spiked nearly 25%,” said Rob Barber, CEO at ATTOM. “The latest increase, small as it was, likely came mainly from homeowners trading higher-rate loans they got in 2021 and 2022 for cheaper mortgages resulting from declining mortgage rates. But it looked like the third-quarter rate dip wasn’t as helpful for purchase lending as buyers kept facing elevated prices and low supplies of properties for sale.”
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