Bailout

MBA: Mortgage Purchase Applications increase slightly last week

By Anonymous

The Refinance Index increased 1.3 percent from the previous week. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 1.5 percent from one week earlier. This third straight weekly increase in the Purchase Index was driven by government purchase applications which increased 3.4 percent from last week, while conventional purchase applications were essentially flat.
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The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages decreased to 4.60 percent from 4.69 percent, with points increasing to 0.93 from 0.88 (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.

The purchase index has increased slightly for three straight weeks - but is still 40% below the level of the last week of April (and about 33% below the last week of April using the 4-week average).

This recent collapse in the purchase index has already shown up as a decline in new home sales (counted when the contract is signed), and will show up in the July and August existing home sales reports (counted at close of escrow).

Full post as published by Calculated Risk on August 04, 2010 (boomark / email).