US Mortgage Originations Seen Plunging in 2010

U.S. residential mortgage originations are expected to plummet 40 percent in 2010 to their lowest level in a decade, eclipsing a forecast drop made just one month ago, the industry's main trade group said Tuesday.

Lenders will underwrite $1.28 trillion in home loans this year, down from $2.11 trillion in 2009, the Mortgage Bankers Association said in its latest forecast. That would be the lowest since $1.14 trillion in 2000.

The forecast was downgraded from December, when the MBA predicted originations would fall about 24 percent.

The forecast decline is worse than what Chase Home Mortgage, one of the largest U.S. lenders, had seen in October.

Its chief executive officer, David Lowman, had forecast mortgage originations falling to about $1.5 trillion, saying that a rise in interest rates from record lows would bring mortgage originations "to a pretty hard stop."

Interest rates are expected to rise when the Federal Reserve completes its pledge to support the mortgage securities market with $1.25 trillion in purchases.

The MBA on Tuesday also said it will also encourage creation of a new type of government-guaranteed mortgage security that would be backed by privately owned, government-chartered "mortgage-credit guarantor entities" based off existing U.S. mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.