New data show the number of home loans written in the fourth quarter of 2023 was down across the country, with a notable exception in South Carolina.
The Aiken/Augusta metro area was one of only five U.S. metros to see more mortgage loans written in Q4 2023 than in the last quarter of 2022, according to data released Thursday by ATTOM Data Services.
The Aiken/Augusta market saw a 27 percent rise in mortgage originations year to year last quarter, which puts the metro area behind only Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Huntsville, Ala., among 193 U.S. metro markets measured.
Otherwise, new mortgage originations in Q4 were down in South Carolina, as they were in the U.S. overall. Nationwide, the 1.34 million home loan originations written in the fourth quarter of 2023 represents a dropoff of 17 percent compared to the last quarter of 2022.
The falloff was higher than the national average in five of the eight metro areas in South Carolina. Spartanburg saw 29.3 percent fewer mortgage loan originations written year-to-year, the highest percentage in the state.
Dropoff was also high in the Myrtle Beach (27.5 percent), Charlotte (21 percent), Hilton Head (19.1 percent), and Charleston (18.3 percent) metro regions.
While still below where they were a year earlier, loan totals in Greenville and Columbia fared much better than the state’s other metros in which originations flagged. Greenville's dropoff was 13 percent, year-to-year, while Columbia 's 7.2 percent falloff was one of the lowest drops in 193 metro areas measured.
ATTOM also found that refinance loans were down year-to-year, nationally, as they were in five South Carolina metros. Meanwhile, Aiken/Augusta led the state again. The metro's 1,344 refi loans signaled the seventh-highest percentage increase among U.S. metros year to year in Q4.
