In the first quarter of 2010, one-half of borrowers who refinanced their conventional loan lowered their mortgage interest rate by at least 16%, according to Freddie Mac's quarterly Refinance Report. The new interest rate was 0.9 percentage points or more below the old rate for one-half of borrowers.
‘Rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages during the first quarter remained low, averaging five percent in Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey,’ notes Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac's vice president and chief economist. ‘The median interest-rate savings for borrowers who refinanced their conventional loan in the first quarter was 0.9 percentage points. Refinances were about three-fourths of originations during the first quarter. In total, the lower rate translates into about $2 billion in interest savings for these borrowers over the first 12 months of the new loan.’
Further, 72% of borrowers who refinanced kept their loan balance largely unchanged or reduced their loan balance outstanding as a result of the refinance, Freddie Mac adds. This latter group, who placed "cash in" to their home as part of the refinance, represented 18% of all borrowers who refinanced during the first quarter. "Cash out" borrowers, those that increased their loan balance by at least 5%, represented 28% of all refinance loans; the cash-out shares recorded over the last two quarters were the lowest since the analysis began in 1985.
In the first quarter, about $9 billion in home equity was cashed out by homeowners when they refinanced their conventional prime-credit home mortgage – the smallest quarterly inflation-adjusted amount since the third quarter of 2000. The main causes of the decline in cash-out refinance were reduced home prices and tighter underwriting standards for loan-to-value ratios.
Among the refinanced loans in Freddie Mac's analysis, the median appreciation of the collateral property was a negative 4% over the median prior loan life of four years.
SOURCE: Freddie Mac