"No One is Making/Getting Home Loans"? NOT Accurate--FHA Home Loans in Oregon in FY '08 Were Nearly $3 Billion.

With credit markets in disarray, it's easy to overlook the home mortgage lending that is quietly taking place.

With my recent post on HECM loans now completed, I thought it might be interesting to add all FHA home loan types (purchase, refinance, and HECM's) into a single table by county to show the number and dollars of FHA lending that took place in Oregon during [federal] FY 2008, which just ended in September.

Even as a long time FHA advocate, I admit that I was blow away at the FY 2008 Oregon FHA loan volume:

• FHA Single Family loan volume was just a few million shy of reaching $3 Billion;
• During FY 2008 FHA helped more than 14,000 Oregon families to:

1. Purchase homes (38% of total FHA loans),or
   
2. Refinance their existing loans (44% of total FHA loans)[Many of these loans were refinances of conventional/subprime ARM loans], or
3. Stay in their homes through the FHA reverse equity/ HECM loan program (18% of total FHA loans) for senior citizens.

The table in the PDF file HERE provides the county level details, and the graph on the second page illustrates the accelerating monthly volume of FHA loans by loan purpose from last October though September of this year.

A couple of additional notes:

1. Adding monthly loan numbers found in the graph, total Oregon FHA loan volume during September 2008 of1,940 loans was an increase of 278% from the total of 513 FHA loans made during October 2007.
2. Adding total loan numbers from the far left column of the table, the 3 county Portland Metro area accounted for a little more than 1/3rd of all FHA loans in Oregon during FY 2008 (5,343/14,244)=38%.