The loan market is tough all over. But some lenders have found a way to grow, and grow big, even as the overall market falters.

In the first half of 2011, the total number of loans written in Massachusetts for all property types – both purchase and refinance – fell to 119,175, from 121,766 during the same period in 2010. Single-family purchase and refinance loans dropped to 81,408 in the first six months of this year, from 85,286 last year, according to data obtained from The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.

Still, several lenders, including a number based in Massachusetts, managed to write significantly more mortgages and refinance loans in the first half than they did in the same period a year ago – in many cases more than doubling and tripling their production.

We call these success stories the Banker & Tradesman Fast 50, a ranking of those lenders that experienced the largest jump in loan volume between the first six months of this year and the same period last year.

The rankings include all lender types, including mortgage companies and credit unions – like the Mass Bay Credit Union, formerly the MBTA Employees Credit Union, which signed off on nine mortgages in the first half of 2011, but wrote just one in the same period a year ago.

The numbers may seem insignificant, but that’s an 800 percent increase.

Chelsea’s Metro Credit Union wrote 31 purchase loans in the first half this year, compared to zero between January and June last year.

Still Uneasy

But despite the often sharp increases, some lenders and brokers listed on the following pages say their successes are signs of modest improvement, rather than the market’s full return to good health.

Northpoint Mortgage, which does business in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, brokered 28 Massachusetts mortgages in the first half of the year. In the same period a year ago, the company brokered 13 loans in the commonwealth.

But more than doubling the firm’s number of Bay State loans wasn’t enough to excite Rich Dinges, founder of the 60-employee firm.

Dinges started Northpoint Mortgage in Sturbridge in 2006. Three years later, he watched as the market descended into “fear and panic.” And despite solid gains in the number of mortgages written in the first half, he’s not ready to call the market “healthy.”

There’s simply too much wrong with the economy, the housing market included, he said.

“In the last two years, we’ve seen a lot of growth,” Dinges said. “But it’s still slow.”

Loans for new homes are especially unpopular, Dinges said. And that tends to affect other segments of the market – furniture and appliance stores, for example.

“I think we’re in a little bit of trouble,” Dinges said. “With high unemployment, we have no buyers for new construction and we won’t until the jobs situation improves.”

Northpoint focuses primarily on first mortgages, rather than refinance loans.

Scott Auen, vice president of mortgage lending at Digital Federal Credit Union, said despite DCU’s success in closing refi loans, there’s still a lot of business to be had. The credit union has beefed up its marketing efforts and is pushing new products, including a 10-year, fixed-rate refi loan, to try to get customers in the door.

DCU closed 912 refi loans in the first half of 2011, up 71 percent from 533 in the same period last year.

Still, Auen called the number of potential customers sitting on the sidelines “shocking.”

Jack Hamilton, president and CEO of Charles River Bank in Medway, said opening two new branches in Bellingham and Mendon played an important role in his bank’s increase in mortgage business. He also credited the relative health – and wealth – of his core market.

“Our market is a little different,” Hamilton said. “Unemployment out here is realistically 6 percent or below. We have some very healthy local employers, like EMC and Waters Corp. There certainly has been a drop in real estate values, but in the past six months, there has been a pick-up in purchase activity.”

To get the market back on its feet, Hamilton said lenders must participate in the market to a much greater extent.

“Somebody’s got to take the step. If everybody stands around saying, ‘we can’t do this, we can’t do this,’ this recession becomes self-fulfilling. You’ve got to stick your toe back in the water.”