Mortgage Bankers Weekly Update: Mortgage Refinance Applications Continue to Increase

Mortgage Bankers Association for the week of  08/25/2010

Market Composite Index: (loan application volume)   increased 4.9 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier.  On an unadjusted basis, the Index increased 4.5 percent compared with the previous week.

Refinance Index: increased 5.7 percent from the previous week and is at its highest level since May 1, 2009. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 0.6 percent from one week earlier.

Purchase Index: decreased 1.1 percent compared with the previous week and was 38.8 percent lower than the same week one year ago.

Refinance Share of Mortgage Activity: increased to 82.4 percent of total applications from 81.4 percent the previous week, which is the highest share observed since January 2009.

Arm Share: increased to 5.8 percent from 5.7 percent of total applications from the previous week.

MBA outlook: (Excerpted from mbaa.org)

Existing home sales in June declined 5.1 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.37 million units from 5.66 million in May, and are 9.8 percent higher than in June of last year. Single family home sales fell 5.6 percent to 4.70 million units in June from 4.98 million units in May, and are 8.5 percent above the pace in June 2009. For both total existing home sales and single family home sales, the monthly decrease was the largest since January this year.

We predict that mortgage originations will decrease to $1.5 trillion in 2010 from an estimated $2.1 trillion in 2009. Purchase activity continues to be weak, while refinance activity is being propped up by mortgage rates that are close to historical lows, although there is much less refinancing going on now than in previous periods of  comparably low mortgage rates. Purchase originations will fall to $576 billion from $750 billion in 2009 and refinance originations will decrease to about $900 billion in 2010 from $1.2 trillion in 2009.


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