$24.9 billion SFR volume in 2005
By COCO SALAZAR
1/26/2006

Annual volume insured by the Department of Veterans Affairs shrunk by 44 percent.

The department guaranteed $24.9 billion in single-family volume in fiscal 2005, down from $44.1 billion a year earlier, VA spokesman Jose Llamas told MortgageDaily.com.

The latest volume consisted of only 165,854 single-family VA loans, compared to 335,788 in fiscal 2004, he added.

The reason guaranteed loans are almost half the amount insured in fiscal 2004 and 2003, when the VA insured 489,418 loans totaling $63.3 billion, is because, in those years, there were "lower interest rates and more veterans doing refis," Llamas said.

"Now that rates are higher the numbers are back to where they usually are," as 165,000 loans is the average number of guaranteed loans in a year, the spokesman noted.

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