Freddie Mac releases 25th Annual ARM Survey resultsMortgagePress.comFreddie Mac, ARM, adjustable rate mortgages, survey, statistics
Freddie Mac has released the results of its 25th Annual
Adjustable-Rate Mortgage (ARM) Survey of prime loans. The survey,
conducted Jan. 5, 2008 to Jan. 9, 2009, found: • Large
premiums for initial interest rates on Treasury-indexed ARMs;
• Continued decline in ARM share of overall lending as the
initial interest-rate savings relative to fixed-rate loans
disappeared; and
• Very thin market for traditional one-year, Treasury-indexed
ARMs.
"Our survey found that starting rates for conforming one-year
ARMs averaged 1.76 percentage points above their fully-indexed
rate, the largest rate premium observed since Freddie Mac began
collecting ARM data in 1984," said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac vice
president and chief economist. "Further, rates on 30-year
fixed-rate mortgages had fallen to 50-year lows and were near or
below initial rates on ARM products. As a consequence, by December
the ARM share of loan applications had fallen to three percent, the
lowest recorded in our survey. With low consumer interest in ARMs,
fewer lenders offered a wide array of ARM products. The traditional
annually adjusting conforming ARM was found at one-in-five lenders
this year, also the lowest share recorded in the quarter century of
the survey."
Over the course of 2008, the Federal Reserve cut its target for
the overnight bank-lending rate, the federal funds rate, by more
than four percentage points to an unprecedented low range of 0-0.25
percent, while annually adjusting (1/1) conforming ARM rates only
fell roughly 0.6 percentage points. Interest rates for 30-year
fixed-rate mortgages, on the other hand, fell more sharply to end
the year at record lows. Interest rates between 30-year fixed-rate
mortgages and 1/1 conforming ARMs narrowed to nearly match one
another, which only occurred once before in the survey in December
2000 when the Treasury yield curve inverted. All other
Treasury-indexed ARM products surveyed (jumbo, FHA and hybrid) had
average initial rates above those for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages
for the first time in Freddie Mac's Annual ARM Survey.
"A large volume of investment funds flowed into Treasury bills
and notes over the past few months, pushing yields on Treasury
bills and notes down to levels not seen in more than 50 years by
year-end," observed Nothaft. "Because ARMs generally have
interest-rate or payment caps that limit payment adjustment,
initial rates on ARMs did not decline as much as yields on one- or
three-year Treasury securities. Further, heightened uncertainty
over future interest-rate levels and expectations of home-value
declines in many markets likely added to the premium above
fully-indexed rates across all ARM products."
Only 21 percent of lenders quoted a conforming 1-year ARM, the
smallest share in 25 years and compared to 96 percent of lenders
offering the product in 1999. Hybrid ARMs, which have an extended
initial fixed-rate period before adjusting annually, are the most
common ARMs available. "The most popular products were the 3/1 and
5/1 ARMs, which have an initial reset period of three and five
years, respectively, and then adjust annually thereafter. About 90
percent of lenders offered the 5/1 hybrid; this product accounted
for most of the conventional, prime ARMs originated in 2008," said
Nothaft.
Consumers, too, shied away from ARMs in 2008. In December 2008,
only three percent of applications were for ARMs, compared to peak
months in 2005, 2004, 2000 and 1995 of around 36 percent, as found
in Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey. Even homeowners
who refinanced avoided ARMs. According to Freddie Macs Refinance
Product Transition Report, 94 percent of conventional prime
borrowers who originally had a one-year ARM chose a new conforming
fixed-rate loan when they refinanced in the third quarter of 2008.
Similarly, approximately 82 percent of borrowers with hybrid ARMs
refinanced into fixed-rate mortgages.
For more information, visit www.freddiemac.com.
