MBA: Mortgage Rates Increase Sharply, Refinance Applications Decline

The MBA reports:

The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, was 658.7, a decrease of 16.2 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from 786.0 one week earlier.
...
The Refinance Index decreased 24.1 percent to 2953.6 from 3890.4 the previous week and the seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 4.3 percent to 267.7 from 256.6 one week earlier.
...
The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages increased to 5.25 percent from 4.81 percent ...
emphasis added

The Purchase Index is now at the level of the late '90s.

Note: the refinance index declined as mortgage rates increased, but the index is still very high.

Click on graph for larger image in new window.

This graph shows the MBA Purchase Index and four week moving average since 2002.

Although we can't compare directly to earlier periods because of the changes in the index, this shows no pick up in overall sales activity.