Christmas Holiday Slows Mortgage Business
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The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) today released its Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the Christmas holiday shortened week ending December 28, 2007. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, was 533.9, a decrease of 11.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from 603.8 one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased 47.2 percent compared with the previous week and was down 20 percent compared with the same week one year earlier.
The Refinance Index decreased 15.4 percent to 1620.9 from 1915.3 the previous week and the seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 8.5 percent to 360.8 from 394.5 one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Purchase Index decreased 44.9 percent to 161.2 from 292.3 the previous week. The seasonally adjusted Conventional Index decreased 11.8 percent to 757.4 from 859.1 the previous week, and the seasonally adjusted Government Index decreased 9.6 percent to 161.1 from 178.3 the previous week.
The four week moving average for the seasonally adjusted Market Index is down 9.0 percent to 650.8 from 715.3. The four week moving average is down 5.9 percent to 412.4 from 438.2 for the Purchase Index, while this average is down 11.8 percent to 2127.4 from 2412.5 for the Refinance Index.
The refinance share of mortgage activity decreased to 50.9 percent of total applications from 53.0 percent the previous week. The adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) share of activity decreased to 9.8 from 10.4 percent of total applications from the previous week.
The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages decreased to 6.05 percent from 6.10 percent, with points unchanged at 1.05 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value (LTV) ratio loans.
The average contract interest rate for 15-year fixed-rate mortgages decreased to 5.61 percent from 5.66 percent, with points decreasing to 1.02 from 1.09 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent LTV loans.
The average contract interest rate for one-year ARMs decreased to 6.00 percent from 6.03 percent, with points decreasing to 1.00 from 1.01 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent LTV loans.
The full press release can be found at www.mortgagebankers.org.