Lower Rates did little for Mortgage Application Volume

Mortgage applications were mixed and largelyrnflat during the week ended February 27. rnThe Mortgage Bankers Association said its Market Composite Index, arnmeasure of application volume, increased 0.1 percent on a seasonally adjustedrnbasis from the week ended February 20. rnOn an unadjusted basis the Index was up 12 percent from the previousrnweek which had been adjusted to reflect that period’s Presidents’ Day holiday.</p

The Refinancing Index eked out a 1 percentrnincrease from one week earlier and applications for refinancing made up 62rnpercent of all mortgage applications, unchanged from the week before.   The seasonally adjusted Purchase Indexrnslipped 0.2 percent while the unadjusted Purchase Index gained 14 percentrncompared to the prior week but was 0.2 percent below its level during the samernweek in 2014.</p

Refinance Index vs 30 Yr Fixed</p

ChartManager.loadChart(‘refiappschart’, ‘RefiMtgAppChart’);

</p

Purchase Index vs 30 Yr Fixed</p

ChartManager.loadChart(‘purchaseappschart’, ‘PurchaseMtgAppChart’);

</p

The FHA share of total applications decreased from a 15.3rnpercent share to 14.6 percentrnwhile the VA share increased 2 basis points to 9.8 percent and USDA’s sharernof slipped to 0.8 percent from 0.9 percent.  The seasonally adjusted conventional RefinancernIndex increased 2.2 percent to the highest level since thernweek ending February 13, 2015.</p

Contract interestrnrates decreased for all mortgage products. rnEffective rates also decreased except for the 15-year fixed-raternmortgage (FRM) which remained unchanged.</p

The average contractrninterest rate for 30-year FRM withrnconforming loan balances ($417,000 orrnless) decreased to 3.96 percent fromrn3.99 percent, with points decreasing to 0.30 from 0.33.  The jumbo 30-year FRM with loan balancesrngreater than $417,000 fell from 4.09 percent with 0.21 points to 3.95 percentrnwith 0.27 point.</p

Thirty-year FRMrnbacked by the FHA had a rate of 3.75 percent with 0.21 point.  A week earlier the rate was 3.82 percent withrn0.15 point.  </p

The average contractrninterest rate for 15-year fixed-rate mortgages decreasedrnto 3.27 percent from 3.28 percent.  Points were unchanged at 0.30.</p

Applications for adjustablernrate mortgages (ARM) constituted 5.4 percent of the total for the week, up fromrn5.2 percent in the previous period.   Thernaverage contract interest rate for 5/1 ARMs decreased to 3.05 percent from 3.28 percent, with points increasing to 0.50 from 0.31. </p

MBA’s Weekly MortgagernApplications Survey has been conducted since 1990 and covers over 75 percentrnof all U.S. retailrnresidential mortgage applications.  Respondents include mortgage bankers,rncommercial banks and thrifts.rnBase period and value for all indexes is March 16, 1990=100 and interest rate informationrnpresumes loans with an 80 percent loan-to-value ratio with points including thernorigination fee.

All Content Copyright © 2003 – 2009 Brown House Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved.nReproduction in any form without permission of MortgageNewsDaily.com is prohibited.