Strengthening in the mortgage refinance category was behind a week-over-week improvement in the volume of applications for residential loans.
A seasonally adjusted
3 percent increase from one week prior was recorded for the Market Composite Index for the week ended Sept. 30.
Foregoing any seasonal adjustments, the index, a measure of home-loan application volume, still moved up 3 percent from the previous report.
The Mortgage Bankers Association reported the index in its
Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey, which it claims covers more than 75 percent of all U.S. retail residential mortgage applications.
MBA said refinance applications
rose 5 percent from the week ended Sept. 28. Applications for refinances represented 63.8 percent of the latest weekly activity. Refinance share widened from 62.7 percent the prior week and 57.4 percent a year prior.
Applications for purchase financing were mostly unchanged from the prior week on a seasonally adjusted and unadjusted basis. Compared to the week ended Oct. 2, 2015, the unadjusted Purchase Index fell 14 percent.
Ten percent of the latest week’s activity was for mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration. FHA share was trimmed from 10.2 percent in the previous report and cut from 12.7 percent in the year-previous report.
Another 11.4 percent of applications were for loans guaranteed by the Department of Veterans Affairs, thinning from 11.9 percent one week prior
but widening from 9.2 percent one year prior.
MBA’s data indicate that interest rates on jumbo mortgages were 2 basis points less than rates on conforming loans. The jumbo-conforming spread was no different than in last week’s report
but was far more narrow than a negative 10 BPS in the same week last year.
The report indicated that applications for adjustable-rate mortgages accounted for 4.5 percent of total applications. ARM share was thicker than
4.4 percent a week earlier and much thinner than 7.6 percent a year earlier.
