Bailout

MBA: Mortgage Applications Decrease, Rates Rise

By Anonymous

The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 4.2 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. ...

The Refinance Index decreased 7.1 percent from the previous week and the seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 2.7 percent from one week earlier. ...

The refinance share of mortgage activity decreased to 65.0 percent of total applications from 67.3 percent the previous week. This is the lowest refinance share observed in the survey since the week ending October 30, 2009. ...

The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages increased to 5.01 percent from 4.91 percent, with points decreasing to 0.76 from 1.30 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value (LTV) ratio loans.

This graph shows the MBA Purchase Index and four week moving average since 1990.

There was a slight increase in purchase applications last week, but the 4-week average is still near the levels of 1997 - after falling sharply at the end of last year. This index shows no indication yet of the expected increase in home sales due to the expiration of the home buyer tax credit.

Full post as published by Calculated Risk on March 24, 2010 (boomark / email).