The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) publishes the results of a weekly applications survey that covers roughly 50 percent of all residential mortgage originations and tracks the average interest rate for 30 year and 15 year fixed rate mortgages, 1 year ARMs as well as application volume for both purchase and refinance applications.The purchase application index has been highlighted as a particularly important data series as it very broadly captures the demand side of residential real estate for both new and existing home purchases.
The latest data is showing that the average rate for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage declined slightly dropping 7 basis points since last week to 5.50% while the purchase application volume decreased 3.5% and the refinance application volume slumped a whopping 23.3% compared to last week’s results.
It’s important to recognize that while the Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing” measures appeared to hold rates down in recent months, the trend now seems to be changing.
In any event, while low rates clearly impacted re-finance activity, purchase activity never showed notable improvement.
The following chart shows how the principle and interest cost and estimated annual income required to cover the PITI (using the 29% “rule of thumb”) on a $400,000 loan has changed since November 2006.
The following chart shows the average interest rate for 30 year and 15 year fixed rate mortgages over the last number of weeks (click for larger version).
The following charts show the Purchase Index, Refinance Index and Market Composite Index since November 2006 (click for larger versions).
