19 Years of Mortgage Origination Data 1990 - 2008

The Mortgage Bankers Association publishes quarterly data on the amount of mortgage originations for homes (1 - 4 family homes)

If you plot the mortgage data (See chart below) you will see the quarterly flows of mortgage orignations for purchase (Blue bars) and Refinancing (Purple Bars)---You can see that in 1990 & 1994 there was very little refinancing--due to high interest rates, and then from 2001 - 2008 just about every quarter saw a greater amount of refinancing than purchase mortgage financing

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Whenever you look at quarterly data it can be a little lumpy, so I transformed the mortgage data to be a rolling 4 quarter average (i.e. the data shown below in Q4-1990 represents the average data for Q1, Q2, Q3, & Q4-1990).

What you will see is that amount of mortgage originations for purchases peaked at Q1-2006 and mortgage refinancing peaked in 2003.

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In my estimation, if the Obama stimulus package is successful in lowering mortgage rates during the first half of 2009, you may see an increase in refinancing and purchase mortgage originations---But much like a python swalling a pig---eventually (1) everyone who could refinance will have refinanced their mortgage and (2) market rates will creep back up---That coupled with fewer homes being sold and dropping real-estate prices will cause the purchase mortgage originations to be dropping in 2010 and 2011 as well.

What do you think?