Mortgage underwriting has improved slightly, according to a new report from the OCC.

Lessening underwriting standards are the great white whale in housing’s recovery, and the 2012 Survey of Credit Underwriting Practices from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is making some suggestions that the tide may be turning for home loans.

A survey of 87 banks with $3 billion or more in assets, the OCC’s study covered $4.6 trillion in loans as of Dec. 31, 2011, which is 91 percent of all the loans in U.S. banking.

Here’s what the OCC found for residential lending:

• Of the 84 banks the OCC surveyed that offer residential loans, 10 percent reported easing their lending requirements, up from 8 percent in 2011 and the highest since 2007.
• Sixty-five percent report their lending standards were unchanged, up from 52 percent in 2011.
• And most notable, 25 percent said lending standards had been tightened at their institution, a 37.5 percent decline from 2011.
• A look at previous years offers even bigger differences. In 2008 and 2009, not a single bank reported easing its lending standards, and from 2008 to 2009, the percent that tightened its standards rose from 56 percent to 73 percent.

Carlos Garcia, the broker/vice president of The Keyes Company, Kendall, and the vice-chairman for the Master Brokers Forum, said that while financing is “just as difficult” in the Miami markets as year’s past, he’s actually finding that appraisals are more of a problem for his transactions than anything else.

“That’s why you have so many cash deals,” he said, meaning sellers who opt for cash offerings (even if they are lower than a competing bid on the property) to avoid the appraisal process.

That preference, Garcia continued, has been tough on some first-time buyers and FHA buyers, who depend on the low down payments for their purchases that always require appraisals; as a result, he said many of those offers on homes are not considered by sellers.

To help address that problem, Garcia said he has made appraisals a part of his inspection period, so that he knows relatively soon if there are any discrepancies between the selling price and the appraised value.