Mortgage Applications Increase In Latest MBA Weekly Survey

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) today released its Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending February 29, 2008. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, was 684.9, an increase of 3.0 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from 665.1 one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index increased 15.3 percent compared with the previous President's Day holiday shortened week and was up 1.1 percent compared with the same week one year earlier.

The Refinance Index increased 4.5 percent to 2569.0 from 2458.9 the previous week and the seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 1.4 percent to 363.1 from 358.2 one week earlier. The Conventional Purchase Index increased 0.9 percent while the Government Purchase Index (largely FHA) increased 3.5 percent. On an unadjusted basis, the Purchase Index increased 14.5 percent to 401.6 from 350.7 the previous week. The seasonally adjusted Conventional Index increased 2.4 percent to 929.0 from 907.1 the previous week, and the seasonally adjusted Government Index increased 6.2 percent to 277.8 from 261.5 the previous week.

The four week moving average for the seasonally adjusted Market Index is down 11.0 percent to 809.1 from 909.5. The four week moving average is down 2.8 percent to 370.7 from 381.3 for the Purchase Index, while this average is down 15.6 percent to 3365.8 from 3987.0 for the Refinance Index.

The refinance share of mortgage activity increased to 52.4 percent of total applications from 52.0 percent the previous week. The adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) share of activity increased to 17.3 from 15.0 percent of total applications from the previous week.

The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages decreased to 5.98 percent from 6.27 percent, with points unchanged at 1.15 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value (LTV) ratio loans.

The average contract interest rate for 15-year fixed-rate mortgages decreased to 5.26 percent from 5.77 percent, with points increasing to 1.08 from 1.01 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent LTV loans.



The average contract interest rate for one-year ARMs decreased to 5.83 percent from 5.84 percent, with points decreasing to 0.85 from 0.86 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent LTV loans.



**SPECIAL NOTES**



The survey covers approximately 50 percent of all U.S. retail residential mortgage applications, and has been conducted weekly since 1990. Respondents include mortgage bankers, commercial banks and thrifts. Base period and value for all indexes is March 16, 1990=100.