Bailout

MBA: Mortgage Purchase Activity decreases slightly

By Anonymous

The Refinance Index decreased 10.8 percent from the previous week. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 0.4 percent from one week earlier.
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The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages decreased to 4.47 percent from 4.50 percent, with points increasing to 1.08 from 0.96 (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.

Purchase applications are at about the levels of 1996 or 1997, suggesting existing home sales (closed transactions) in August, September and even October, will only be slightly higher than in July. Note: economist Tom Lawler's "early read" is for August existing home sales of 4.1 million SAAR.

Full post as published by Calculated Risk on September 15, 2010 (boomark / email).