Volume of mortgage applications down 5.5% - MarketWatch

On a seasonally adjusted basis, mortgage applications to refinance existent loans were down 6.4% inch the hebdomad ended Aug. 17, according to the MBA's up-to-the-minute survey. Week-to-week applications for mortgages to buy places were down a seasonally adjusted 5.0%.

But the state of the mortgage marketplace do it necessary to see these information in context, said John Jay Brinkmann, the MBA's frailty president of research and economics.

"Given the current disturbance in the mortgage market, week-to-week alterations in the purchase applications index should be treated with a certain grade of caution," Brinkmann said in a news release.

"For example, the sudden issue of a major conceiver respective hebdomads ago may have got led to a bump up in applications over the last two hebdomads as those borrowers caught in the closure reapplied for mortgages at other institutions. The driblet in applications we see here may be an indicant that those borrowers have got now been taken attention of," he said.

The volume of applications filed for all loans was up 14.2% compared with the same hebdomad in 2006, the Master in Business reported. The four-week moving norm for all loans was up 1.3%.

Refinancings accounted for 39.9% of mortgage activity last week, unchanged. Adjustable-rate mortgages decreased to 18.6% of applications, down from 21.0% the former week.

Interest rates on 30- and 15-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 6.49% and 6.20% last week, respectively, up from the anterior week's 6.45% and 6.19%. The norm charge per unit on one-year ARMs rose to 5.84%, up from 5.81% the former week.

The Master in Business study covers about one-half of all U.S. retail residential mortgage originations.

Amy Hoak is a MarketWatch newsman based in Chicago.