Section II STATISTICS OF INSURING OPERATIONS A detailed statistical analysis of the insuring operations of the Federal Housing Administration during 1949, as provided for under Titles I, II, VI, VII, and VIII of the National Housing Act as amended, is presented below. There were in operation during the year three major types of FHA programs: (1) home mortgage insurance under Titles II and VI; (2) rental project mortgage insurance under Titles II, VI, and VIII; and (3) property improvement loan insurance under Title I. In addition, a limited amount of activity was reported for the prefabricated house production and interim. credit program of Section 609.1 No activity was reported under the yield insurance provisions of Title VII. The statistics covering each of the three major types of programs are analyzed in Section II, first, as to volume of insuring operations and, second, as to characteristics of the individual cases insured. The relative importance of each of these three FHA programs, based on the dollar volume of insurance written during the year and cumulative from the beginning of operations in 1934 through 1949, is shown below: Of the $3.8 billion of insurance written during the year, 57 percent was written on home mortgages, 27 percent on rental-project mortgages, and the remaining 16 percent on property improvement loans. On a cumulative basis, the relative shares accounted for by each of these three programs is somewhat different, primarily because the insurance of mortgages secured by rental projects has been of major 1 Production credit and interim credit for prefabricated housing totaled $1,466,308 during the year, of which $967,909 covered the insurance of manufacturing loans for 434 houses, and $498,399 covered the insurance of 192 purchaser's loans. The cumulative total of insurance under Sec. 609 amounted to $3,338,280 for the manufacture of 1,150 units. Both insurance volume and default experience under this program are discussed in Sec. I of this report. importance only during more recent years. Relative to 1948, the 1949 annual volume of home mortgages insured increased about 4 percent, rental-project insurance rose some 67 percent, while property improvement loans fell 2 percent. Home Mortgage Insurance Under Titles II and VI During 1949, home mortgage insurance was written under four sections of the National Housing Act. The long-range Section 203 program of Title II, which provides for the insurance of mortgages secured by one- to four-family structures, accounted for 84 percent of all home mortgages insured during the year. The remainder of the home mortgages were insured under Title VI: 15 percent in one- to four-family home mortgages insured under the Veterans' Emergency Housing program of Section 603, and the remaining 1 percent in mortgages on site-fabricated single-family homes insured under Section 611 and in one- to seven-family home mortgages insured under Section 603 pursuant to Section 610. Section 610 provides for the insurance under Section 603 of home mortgages financing the sale of certain publicly financed housing. In addition to these four programs, a small volume of loans was insured covering the construction of new single-family homes under the Class 3 program of Title I. This activity is discussed in the portion of Section II of this report which describes the insurance of property improvement loans. Volume of Business FHA insured $2.2 billion in home mortgages during 1949, secured by 316,000 dwelling units (303,000 mortgages). Up 4 percent from 1948 (see Table 4), this 1949 activity brought the dollar volume of business cumulative from 1934 through 1949 to $12 billion (2.4) million dwelling units). In 1949, about 58 percent of the dwelling units covered by these mortgages were in newly constructed houses and the remaining 134,000 were in existing structures. As compared with 1948, units covered by new-home mortgages in 1949 declined 11 percent while units covered by existing-home mortgages increased 17 percent. The average amount of home mortgages insured during 1949 was $6,945 per unit-$7,160 for new construction and $6,654 for existing construction. The average for the total was up $321 from the previous year, new construction increasing $176 and existing construction rising $672. The table shows a substantial decline in the volume of insurance written during the year under the Section 603 Veterans' Emergency Housing program. Authority to issue new-construction commitments TABLE 4.-Yearly volume of all home mortgages insured by FHA: Number of units and amount of mortgages on new and existing homes, by sections, 1935-49 1 For yearly volume of all home mortgages insured, by sections, see Table 1. under this section expired April 30, 1948, but the volume of commitments outstanding as of that date enabled a high volume of insuring activity to continue during 1948 and into the spring of 1949, with 48,000 new units being insured in the 12-month period ending December 31, 1949. Although Section 203 new-construction insurance rose fourfold in 1949, total new-home mortgage insurance was off 8 percent from 1948. Practically all of the record 134,000 existing units insured during the year were under Section 203. Status of processing. During 1949, an all-time record number of 508,000 home mortgage applications were processed by FHA. indicated in Table 5, about 7 out of every 8 applications processed during the year resulted in commitments to insure, while slightly over one-eighth were rejected. Of the cases disposed of during the year, nearly 2 out of every 3 were insured. Expired commitments constituted the remainder or slightly over one-fifth of the total cases disposed of during 1949. TABLE 5.-Disposition of cases closed: 1- to 4-family home mortgages processed under Sec. 203, 1940-49 18.8 19.4 19.3 13.4 10. 1 Firm commitments expired 2. Insured.. 15.3 15.0 26.9 12.5 27.9 21.3 16.3 56.9 25.8 14.2 3.2 19.6 20.3 4.2 5.3 4.4 6.3 3.3 7.6 5.7 8.9 6.3 4.3 3.9 68.8 44.7 54.5 64.6 71.3 20.5 41:6 64.4 62.6 54.8 59.5 14.2 17.2 3.7 64.9 Total cases closed.. 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 1 Excludes cases still in process and commitments outstanding at end of year. Excludes cases reopened. State Distribution Totals for the year.-About 16 percent of the home mortgages insured during 1949 were secured by properties located in the State of California. After this State, which accounted for 47,800 cases (see Table 6), the next leading State was Texas with 21,200 cases, followed by Michigan with 15,700, New York with 13,300, Pennsylvania with 12,900, and Washington with 12,700. These six States accounted for about 41 percent of the United States total-approximately the same as in 1948. |