Record low interest rates and bargain home prices are creating a mini-boom in Florida mortgages, a new national survey shows.

Florida accounted for more than one out of every five home loans added in the nation from April to June, according to the most recent survey of U.S. lenders from the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Lenders reported adding 34,250 more loans for Florida homes in the second quarter of the year than between January and March, according to the survey. During the same period, there were 121,342 more loans nationwide than in the first quarter of the year. No statistics are available for how many mortgages were in South Florida.

Jay Brinkman, the association’s chief economist, said the survey shows that the Florida housing market is stabilizing after it became the country’s top spot for foreclosures. It also indicates fewer Floridians are missing house payments, he added. In fact, the Sunshine State‘s delinquency rate peaked nearly two years ago in late 2009 and continued to decline.

“I think this is the biggest sign of improvement in Florida,” said Brinkman.

He noted the survey is a snapshot of the nation’s mortgage trends and that it may not include all loans. “While we attempt to track them all down,” he said, “it often takes more than one count to do so.”

The declining rate of delinquent loans is bolstering some South Florida lenders’ confidence. Rich Helber, CEO and president of Tropical Financial Credit Union of South Florida, is one.

“There is a lot more stability,” said Helber, referring to his company’s mortgages. “We don’t have the charge offs, the loan losses, we did a year ago.”

There’s also “no longer a free fall of home prices,” added Helber, whose firm has 10 outlets in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties, 55,000 members and $600 million in assets.

He said his credit union has loosened mortgage requirements and doesn’t automatically reject applicants who have high debt, as long as they have a good history of paying their bills. Mortgage applicants may not need to make a 20 percent down payment if they have a credit score of 650 or above, he added.

More home buyers have been attracted to falling mortgage rates in the second quarter, said Claudine Claus, president of Home Financing Center in Coral Gables. Her company saw loans jump 20 percent during that period.

Interest rates for a 30-year fixed rate home loan fell from 5.06 percent in late March to 4.79 percent by the end of June, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Monthly Interest Rate Survey.

Since then, interest rates have dropped more, keeping business brisk, Claus said. The rate on a fixed-rate, 30-year loan dropped from an average of 4.32 percent in early August to 4.151 percent a week later — the lowest since Freddie Mac began surveying in 1971.

SunSentinel/Florida/Gehrke-White

FloridaLatinConnection/ Arnoldo Varona, Editor 

Low mortgage rates driving a boom in Florida home loansl