Housing Finance Forecasts now available for March 2024

Fannie Mae and MBA published their housing finance forecast for March 2024 this week. These are estimates of the quarterly purchase and refinance origination volumes for 1st lien, closed-end, single family mortgages in 2024 and 2025.

This article provides a brief review of these latest forecasts and highlights the major changes in projected loan originations, expressed in loan counts, compared to prior months. Additionally, we provide the latest reported agency issuance – from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae sellers – to see how the forecasts are tracking to actuals.

The goal is to share forecast changes and the latest actual volumes as actionable data for mortgage industry lenders and vendors who are managing budgets and tracking market share and performance. Summary data is now available for free download monthly below, with detailed lender-level originations data available for purchase.

Fannie Mae and MBA housing forecasts for March 2024

The MBA forecast estimates 5,085,000 and 5,754,000 loan originations for 2024 and 2025 respectively, increasing the 2024 purchase estimate slightly. Fannie Mae made downward adjustments to all quarters in 2024 and 2025, and is now projecting 4,453,000 and 8.3% lower for 2024, and 5,380,000 loans and 7.9% lower for 2025, compared to the prior month estimates.

MBA lowered their estimate for Q1 2024 by 3.2%, increased the Q2 2024 estimate by 4.6% to leave the full year unchanged from the prior month. Further, MBA left 2025 unchanged from the prior month. Overall, Fannie Mae is now projecting volumes 12.4% lower for 2024 and 6.5% lower for 2025 than MBA.

MBA and Fannie Mae will update 2023 actuals after the release of HMDA in Q2 2024.

Housing finance forecasts for March 2024 with latest origination volume actuals (‘000s)

MtgeFi produces a consolidated quarterly model with actual loan volumes to compare to the housing finance forecasts allowing customers to monitor budgets and track market share. For Q1 2024, based on agency issuance through March and prior origination mix, we still project combined agency and portfolio originations of 831,000 1st lien, closed-end, 1-4 single family mortgages.

Data is available monthly or quarterly and include updates to MBA and Fannie Mae housing forecasts, current agency issuance and the latest bank and credit union portfolio originations.

More information about Fannie Mae and MBA economic and housing forecasts