Dive Brief:
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Upward-creeping mortgage rates meant fewer homeowners refinanced their property in 2013, but interest costs didn’t keep consumers from taking out loans to buy houses.
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A Monday report by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, which includes the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., reveals that mortgage originations dipped by 11% to 8.7 million, a decline blamed largely on sluggish refi activity after the rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage spiked by about approximately 1 percentage point, to 4.46%.
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At the same time, the number of home buyer mortgages grew 13%, about the same increase as in 2012.
Dive Insight:
The number of Asian-Americans who took out home loans in the U.S. last year grew faster than any other demographic group, by a total of 42%, while black borrowers grew most slowly, at 12%.