Mortgage Applications Down In March
The Market Composite Index, released by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) is a measure of mortgage loan application volume that has decreased 1.9 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in just a little over a week.
The Refinance Index decreased 1.7 percent and the adjusted Purchase Index decreased 2.3 percent in just one week.
The refinance share of mortgage activity increased to 67.3 percent of total applications from 67.2 percent in one week.
The adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) share of activity decreased to 4.6 percent from 5.1 percent of total applications from the previous week.
The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages decreased to 4.91 percent from 5.01 percent, with points increasing to 1.30 from 0.82 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value (LTV) ratio loans.
This is the lowest 30-year fixed-rate observed in the survey since mid-December of 2009, yet the effective rate was unchanged from last week due to the significant increase in points.