WASHINGTON – The number of mortgage applications filed nationwide last week rebounded from the 2008 low of the week before, as rates dipped slightly, the Mortgage Bankers Association said today in its weekly report.
The trade group’s seasonally adjusted Market Composite Index – a measure of overall mortgage loan application volume – rose to 432.6 points in the week ended Aug. 1. That represented an increase of 2.8 percent from the previous week’s 420.8 points (READ MORE) but a decline of 33.7 percent from the same week a year earlier.
The weekly survey, conducted by the MBA since 1990, covers about half of retail mortgage originations nationwide.
The MBA’s seasonally adjusted Purchase Index rose 1.8 percent to 315.2 points last week from 309.5 the week ended July 25. The Refinance Index rose 4.4 percent to 1,121.9 points from 1,074.4 the week before.
Refinancing attempts accounted for 35.9 percent of total mortgage applications, up from 35.32 percent the week before, the MBA said. Meanwhile, applications for adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) fell to 6.9 percent of the total from the previous week’s 7.3 percent.
The average contract interest rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage dipped to 6.41 percent in the week ended July 25 from 6.46 the week before, as the average rate on a 15-year fixed-rate loan edged up to 6.02 percent from the preceding week’s 5.98 percent. The rate on a one-year ARM declined to 7.17 percent from the 7.25 percent average of the week ended July 25.
“Home loans are tougher to get for some borrowers and more expensive for others,” Michael Larson, an analyst at Weiss Research in Jupiter, Fla., told Bloomberg News. “I expect sales to remain subdued and prices to slump, albeit at a more gradual pace”
The Mortgage Bankers Association is a trade group representing the real estate finance industry. Its 3,000 member companies include mortgage firms, commercial banks, thrifts, life insurance companies and others. Additional information, including the MBA’s Weekly Application Survey, is available at www.mortgagebankers.org.
