Mortgage Bankers Association for the week of 3/17/2010
Refinance Index: decreased 1.7 percent from the previous week and the seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 2.3 percent from one week earlier.
Purchase Index: decreased 1.8 percent compared with the previous week and was 13.9 percent lower than the same week one year ago.
Refinance Share of Mortgage Activity: increased to 67.3 percent of total applications from 67.2 percent the previous 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.
Arm Share: decreased to 4.6 percent from 5.1 percent of total applications from the previous week.
MBA outlook: (Excerpted from mbaa.org)
The most recent data on the housing market continues to show profound weakness .
Inventories of unsold homes have declined, but remain elevated. Expect further additions to the supply of homes on the market due to the still growing number of homes in or potentially in foreclosure. We expect that home prices may stabilize in 2010, but wont begin to grow appreciably until late 2011 or early 2012.
Although the Fed has reaffirmed plans to end the MBS purchase program by the end of March, mortgage rates havent budged to this point. We still anticipate that mortgage rates will likely rise by about half a percentage point in the second quarter, and then another half a percentage point through the remainder of the year, as the economic recovery continues. Mortgage rates at 6 percent should significantly slow refinance activity, but should not slow the modest housing market recovery we are forecasting.
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