FHA Market Share Tops 10%

Increasing demand for Federal Housing Administration-insured loans has pushed the FHA's market share above 10%, and loan endorsements in the first eight months of fiscal year 2008 already exceed the total for all of fiscal 2007. "Since September 2007, FHA has helped pump more than $76.1 billion in mortgage activity into the housing market," FHA Commissioner Brian Montgomery said, and $30.3 billion of those loans have helped conventional borrowers refinance into FHA loans. The FHA endorsed 424,700 mortgages totaling $59.8 billion in fiscal 2007 when subprime lenders were still taking customers away from the agency. Since the subprime meltdown last year, the FHA's market share has risen from 3% to 10%-12%, Mr. Montgomery told the National Press Club. The latest FHA activity report shows mortgage applications running at a 2.1 million annual rate during the last two weeks of May, compared with an annual rate of 777,900 in the same period of fiscal 2007. FHA loan endorsements are running at a 1.36 million annual rate, up 130% from that of a year ago.