New Hampshire’s most prolific loan originators saw their loan totals sometimes double from 2019 to 2020.

The names of New Hampshire’s top loan originators of 2020 may be familiar from prior years, but the total volumes and numbers of loans each produced represent significant jumps from prior years. 

Jay Vogel of Residential Mortgage Services Inc., the state’s most prolific loan originator last year, saw his total number of loans jump from 274 were worth $67.47 million in 2019 to 584 worth $164.43 million in 2020. 

Triangle Credit Union Stacey Gagnon, the top credit union loan originator by number of loans saw her tally jump from 163 loans worth $23.18 million in 2019 to 253 loans worth $53.14 million in 2020. 

And Merrimack County Savings Bank’s Matthew Thomas, the most prolific bank-affiliated loan originator, made just 128 loans worth $32.88 million in 2019. His 2020 total: 205 loans worth $80.35 million. 

The Warren Group, publisher of The Registry Review, has compiled from its proprietary loan originators module the top loan originators of calendar year 2020. The originators are ranked by number of loans, loan volume statewide, by region and by the institution with which they are most closely affiliated. 

Loan originators across the state processed 67,128 residential loans worth $17.45 billion in 2020, up from 41,366 worth $9.83 billion in 2019, a 62 percent jump in numbers of loans made.  

Who originated the most mortgages? Who did the greatest volume of loans? See our rankings of New Hampshire’s top loan originators of 2020

This stupefying jumps in residential mortgage volumes was powered by – and helped power – one of the hottest residential real estate markets in living memory, even amid a global pandemic.  

Purchase activity statewide was $5.68 billion last year compared to $5.09 billion in 2019, made up of 21,180 loans in 2020, up from 20,604 the year before. 

But the biggest source of loan originators’ business was the refinance market, with 45,948 loans worth $11.77 billion being processed. That total number of loans was up by 120 percent over 2019’s already-high tally of 20,762 loans worth $4.74 billion, numbers that themselves were big jumps over 2018’s – a one-third increase in the dollar volume alone. 

With low interest rates set to continue for some time but home prices continuing to rise due to lack of inventory, it’s uncertain whether 2020’s boom will continue through all of 2021 as homebuyers face cost pressures. 

“New Hampshire is a popular place to live and work, perhaps even more so since the pandemic opened up the possibility that many could work remotely effectively,” New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority Executive Director Dean Christon said in a statement accompanying the agency’s latest statistical report on the state’s housing market. “Yet our housing inventory – both homes to buy and to rent – and housing affordability are seriously limiting the places that our state’s workforce will live, raise families, and retire.” 

Even as the statewide median single-family sale price steadily jumped up throughout 2020, ending the year at $320,000 according to The Warren Group, housing affordability grew thanks to dramatic interest rate drops set in motion by the Federal Reserve. First American Financial Corp., another real estate data firm, calculated that the average household’s buying power jumped by double-digit percentages on a year-over-year basis each month from May to August last year, and continued to grow through February of this year.  

However, First American calculated, that same household’s buying power dropped 5.7 percent in March, the most recent data available, as the statewide median single-family sale price rose 14 percent, according to The Warren Group. The state saw another 13.39 percent rise in that figure in April.