Still, stronger mortgage business helped JPMorgan and Wells Fargo beat Wall Street expectations for first-quarter earnings. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon boasted that the bank had originated 200,000 mortgages in the quarter.

Two key factors helped:

— The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage dropped to 3.87 percent in February, the lowest since long-term mortgages began in the 1950s. Rates have stayed low: This week, the average is 3.88 percent.

Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf said the housing market is close to a "tipping point" at which it can take off.

"When you have the dynamics of higher rental rates and lower home values at great financing rates, there's a point in time where the market's going to clear and you're going to see improvement," Stumpf said.

Some markets, he said, like Texas, Northern California and Washington, D.C., have already reached that point.

— Job growth in January and February was some of the strongest since the Great Recession, and the unemployment rate has fallen to 8.2 percent, the lowest since January 2009.