Noting a decrease in both purchase volume and refinance activity from 2009, the first-quarter update to iEmergent’s formal 2010-2014 Mortgage Volume Forecast was recently released by the Des Moines, Iowa-based market research, forecasting, and advisory services firm.

As the housing finance market continues to struggle against continued high levels of unemployment, tightened credit and lending standards, unstable home prices, rising interest rates, and a continuing increase in delinquencies and foreclosures, iEmergent said the update comes at a crucial time for the mortgage lending and banking industry.

The newly-updated forcast provides lending details regarding expected loan volumes and market behavior at the national, state, county, and local community levels. Highlights of the updtate indicate that 2010 home financing opportunities, which many experts hoped had reached their lowest in 2009, will remain “mired in a sluggish trough” in 2010.

According to the update, total purchase volume is expected to reach 2.99 million loans for $556.9 billion. Refinance volume is forecast to range from 2.77 million loans for $531.1 (low range) to 3.35 million loans for $643 billion (high range). In addition, the update anticipates total mortgage volume to range from 5.76 million loans for $1.09 trillion (low range) to 6.34 million loans for $1.20 trillion (high range).

The volume forecasts represent an estimated 4.8 percent decrease in purchase volume from 2009 and a 52 percent decrease or more in refinance activity, resulting in a purchase to refinance split of approximately 49 percent/51percent.

This projected decrease results from the severely constrained pool of 2010 potential homebuyers who might be eligible, able, and willing to purchase or refinance a home, iEmergent said. Shrinking to levels lower than those experiences in the early 1990s, more than one-third of all U.S. households are no longer in the homebuyer pool.

“Lenders can expect to see spurts of increased mortgage activity as individual households act on low rates, stimulus efforts and/or their personal situations, but elevated volumes will be unsustainable and will diminish over time as the remaining household pools shrink faster than they can be replenished,” said Dennis Hedlund, president of iEmergent. “Consumers are saving more, wary of banks and worried about jobs and earnings stability.”