Originations

Loan defect risk in purchase applications stopped falling and plateaued in October, according to First American Financial Corp.

Loan limits for most mortgages Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy will exceed $500,000 for the first time ever next year, and the maximum for most high-cost areas will be $765,000.

From product-specific variations in refinancing rates to pockets of depreciation in an otherwise healthy market, here are some details in housing-related data that highlight important underlying trends in the mortgage business.

The former head of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight explains why he thinks the mortgage industry is closer than ever to having a truly paperless process, and weighs in on GSE reform.

With economic expansion expected to keep churning through at least the first half of next year, Fannie Mae upwardly revised its single-family mortgage origination outlook for 2019 and 2020.

The percentage of recent mortgage borrowers with subprime credit scores still resides in the single digits, but nearly doubled what is was in 2013, according to TransUnion.

Sixty percent of the loans were underwritten with just 12- or 24-month bank statements, according to ratings agency reports.

Freddie Mac is now forecasting back-to-back years of $2 trillion in mortgage loan originations rather than a drop-off in 2020.

Rising demand and plummeting mortgage rates pushed multifamily origination dollar volume above 2017's record to a new peak, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Mortgage rates rose for the first time since the middle of July, but that, along with continued consumer worries about the economy, helped to reduce application activity from the prior week.