Improving Economy to Choke Refinancing Boom
The MBA forecast extends its life, but the forecaster says its time is nigh.
The Mortgage Bankers Association raised its forecasts for economic growth this year based on better prospects for a faster vaccine rollout, a slowdown in COVID-19 infections and congressional approval of a large pandemic relief bill this spring, an MBA forecaster said Wednesday.
The monthly forecast released Feb. 19 also showed a major upward revision in refinance originations for the fourth quarter and the current quarter.
The MBA said it now expects refinance originations for 2020’s fourth quarter to be $724 billion, 20% greater than the Jan. 20 forecast and 90% higher than a year earlier.
Among credit unions, Callahan & Associates’ Feb. 11 Trendwatch report showed first-mortgage originations were $79 billion in the three months ending Dec. 31 — 36% higher than in 2019’s fourth quarter, but falling below the five-quarter peak of $81 billion in the third quarter.
But Joel Kan, the MBA’s assistant vice president of economic and industry forecasting, said he still expects the refinancing boom is coming to an end in the second quarter as interest rates rise.
The MBA has forecast 10-year Treasury yields to reach 1.4% by mid-2021, but Kan noted they already reached that point Wednesday. Rates for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages closely followed the 10-year trend, and are 3.08% this week, their highest mark since September.
The rates had been below 3% from November to early February, helping to extend the peak of the refinance boom, which the MBA had previously thought would be in the third quarter.
By the second quarter, the MBA said it expects the 30-year rate to rise to 3.1%, roughly matching rates a year earlier. After that, it said it expects the rates to rise further, ending the year at 3.4%, compared with 2.8% in 2020’s fourth quarter.
“Our baseline is for re-fis to fall off,” Kan said. “There are a lot of people who could still be in the money to have the incentive to refinance, but if they haven’t acted over the last six to eight months when rates were near 3% it seems unlikely you’re going to see them rush back in.”
The estimates have been based largely on weekly surveys the MBA conducts among a large pool of lenders and servicers. It then benchmarks its data in late spring after Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data is released for the previous year.
The fourth-quarter adjustments reflect MBA’s evolving forecasting methods to incorporate more external data, such as those from public companies or documents connected with issuances of mortgage-backed securities.
“With a large group of publicly traded companies, there’s more data out there,” Kan said.
Refinance originations for this year’s first quarter was revised upwards 48% to $740 billion. The revised amount is 142% higher than a year earlier. That revision reflected data from its weekly survey and other sources showing a continuing large volume of applications by homeowners trying to refinance mortgages.
The MBA also revised numbers connected to the overall economy to reflect its expectations of faster growth.
The MBA said it now expects Real Gross Domestic Product will rise at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.8% this quarter, up from 2.3% in last month’s estimate. Estimates for the rest of the year were raised by 2 percentage points, with growth peaking at 7.2% in the third quarter.
For the year, it said it expects GDP growth of 5.9% (revised from 3.7%), up from 2.2% growth in 2020.
Kan said the changes over the last month were made as it became clearer that vaccinations were gaining speed, infection rates were slowing and federal relief would pass Congress.
Kan said he and others at the MBA watch the health trends because they will determine when people will be begin behaving (and spending) more like they did in pre-pandemic times: Going to movies, shopping in stores, traveling, attending sports events and dining out. And that time is appears to be coming sooner than it seemed a month ago, he said.
“That is going to boost the economy in the second half of the year,” Kan said.
On top of that, federal relief will help many Americans. “Households are still under stress.”
The MBA has not changed its forecast for purchase originations. It said it still expects $1.57 trillion in the 12 months ending Dec. 31, up 10.5% from 2020.
Kan said there’s still a large cohort of young, first-time buyers ready to enter the market. Constraints for them will be supply of homes, and potentially the supply of credit, which has been tighter since the onset of the pandemic, the tightest since 2014.
“You need that credit to be there,” he said.