Survey: Loan applications on the rise

MBA on Oct. 4 released its latest Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending Sept. 29.

The survey covers approximately 50 percent of all U.S. retail residential mortgage originations, and has been conducted weekly since 1990. Respondents include mortgage bankers, commercial banks and thrifts.

The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, was 633.9, an increase of 11.9 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from 566.5 the previous week.

On an unadjusted basis, the index was down 10.9 percent compared with the same week in 2005.

“Refinance applications continue to increase as mortgage rates have declined to their lowest levels since the beginning of the year,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s senior director of single-family research and economics, in a news release.

The seasonally-adjusted Refinance Index increased by 17.5 percent to 1,970.8 from 1,677.5 the previous week and the Purchase Index increased by 7.6 percent to 404.6 from 375.9 one week earlier.

Other seasonally adjusted index activity includes the Conventional Index, which increased by 11.8 percent to 939.3 from 840 the previous week, and the Government Index, which increased 12.9 percent to 124.8 from 110.5 the previous week.

The four-week moving average for the seasonally adjusted Market Index is up 2.9 percent to 595.1 from 578.2. The four-week moving average increased 0.9 percent to 397.2 from 393.4 for the Purchase Index, while this average was up 5.7 percent to 1748.5 from 1654.5 for the Refinance Index.

The refinance share of mortgage activity increased to 46.7 percent of total applications from 44.3 percent the previous week. This is the highest that the refinance share has been since February 2005. The adjustable-rate mortgage share of activity increased to 27 percent of total applications from 26.4 percent the previous week.

The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages increased to 6.24 percent from 6.18 percent, with points decreasing to 1.03 from 1.06 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value ratio loans.

The average contract interest rate for 15-year fixed-rate mortgages increased to 5.86 percent from 5.81 percent, with points decreasing to 1 from 1.12 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value loans.

The average contract interest rate for one-year adjustable-rate mortgages decreased to 5.86 percent from 5.90 percent, with points remaining unchanged at 0.79 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value loans.

MBA represents more than 3,000 member companies in the U.S. real estate finance industry.