Countrywide Financial Corp. released numbers today showing a refinancing boom helped push February mortgage loan fundings up 16.9 percent from the month before, to $25.6 billion, but purchase-loan activity fell to a new low.

Countrywide said refinancings grew 29.2 percent in February, to $19.5 billion, helping the company post the best numbers for total mortgage fundings since August.

But purchase-loan volume fell 10.2 percent, to $6.1 billion — a new low for Countrywide since the housing slowdown began. Before the disruption of secondary mortgage markets last summer, Countrywide’s monthly purchase loan volume hit $20.7 billion in June, a peak for the year.

The Calabasas, Calif.-based lender saw total loan fundings plummet from a 2007 peak of $45.3 billion in June to $21.2 billion in September after worries about delinquencies and foreclosures disrupted the secondary market for loans not guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Average daily mortgage loan applications for February fell 27.1 percent, to 1,924, compared to the month before, and mortgage loans in the pipeline also slipped by 6.8 percent, to 47,559.

Credit quality in Countrywide’s $1.48 trillion servicing portfolio was mixed, with delinquencies essentially unchanged but foreclosures pending continuing to rise.

The delinquency rate on Countrywide’s servicing portfolio, which stood at 4.48 percent a year ago, was growing by an average of 40 basis points a month in the second half of 2007, including a 68-basis-point jump from November to December.

But in February, for the first time in nearly a year, delinquencies as a percentage of unpaid principal balance did not show a month-to-month increase. Measured as a percentage of unpaid principal balance, the 7.44 percent delinquency rate was essentially unchanged from 7.47 percent in January.


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