Adjustable-rate mortgage volumes triple at banks this decade

The surge in adjustable-rate mortgages this decade led their share of the market to more than triple over four years at the nation’s largest banks, according to a new Federal Reserve report. 

Conventional ARM originations at the financial institutions overseen by the Fed accounted for 25.1% of their mortgage originations in the first quarter this year. Total unpaid ARM balance of the loans also grew to a record of $344.3 billion, according to the quarterly report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. 

The conventional slice of ARMs has expanded three times larger since the first quarter of 2021, when the loans accounted for just 7.8% of total originations. 

Unpaid balance also grew for a 12th consecutive quarter and is now 34.5% above where it stood in first-quarter…