Posted on 09/25/2013 11:49:23 AM PDT by whitedog57
A bit of good news for the economy. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, mortgage applications rose from the previous week fr 5.53% while new home sales rose 421k in August.
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The recent downward trend in the Bankrate 30 year fixed-rate mortgage has help lift sagging mortgage purchase applications by 6.65%.
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Mortgage refinancing rose 4.86% with the same decline in the 30 year fixed-rate. The refinance share of mortgage activity was unchanged at 61 percent of total applications from the previous week. The HARP share of refinance applications increased to 41 percent from 40 percent the week before, and is the highest since MBA started tracking this measure in early 2012.
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New home sales rose 7.95% in August. The median price for new home sales fell to their lowest point since January 2013.
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The Longer View
According to the according Mortgage Bankers Association, mortgage purchase applications remain in the doldrums at 1996 levels.
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And mortgage purchase applications resemble the employment-to-population ratio.
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Mortgage refinancings have normalized to pre-housing crash levels.
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New home sales rose 7.9% in August and we are back to 1982 levels.
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The government’s HARP refinancing program is surging while new home sales slowly grind back to 1982 levels.
well, yes and no
according to the top selling realtors, something like 3/4 of all sales are to Chinese (and a few other) immigrants, or people over there who wish to buy in anticipation of possibly coming here later in life.
that is mostly in the high priced neighborhoods.
in the cheaper neighborhoods, most of the sales have been to a hanful of large investment banks or pools that seek to create big rental farms. These purchases are reportedly drying up as a couple of the first investment banks are discovering how difficult it is to manage properties, especially when they are scattered all over town and are not on a single compact site like an apartment block..... and of course the stinko economy means that many of the tenants stop paying the rent, too...
back to 1982? as I recall 1982, the majority of buyers back then were “regular American workers”
so NO, we are nowhere near “back to 1982”
it is a completely different world nowadays
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