About 2.5 Times As Many Mortgage Refinancings As Purchase Mortgages: Almost Half of Purchase Mortgages Were With Very Low Or No Down Payment

From The Wall Street Journal, "Eight Takeaways on Mortgages After the Housing Bust" by Nick Timiraos:

Source; The Wall Street Journal

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1. Lending is up, but there’s a big asterisk. While the number of mortgage loans made in 2012 increased by 38%, most of that came from refinancing. The number of loans made to people actually buying homes increased by 13% to levels that were still shy of every year between 2000 and 2009.
***2. Borrowers are having trouble making big down payments. Loans made by the two federal agencies with the easiest terms today—the Federal Housing Administration, which requires down payments of just 3.5%, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, which makes loans to veterans and doesn’t require any money down—accounted for almost 45% of owner-occupant home-purchase loans.