US Mortgage Purchase Demand Rises 8% From Last Week, But Still Down 31% From Last Year (Mortgage Rates Down -1.56% WoW)

Confounded Interest ^ | 04/12/2023 | Anthony B. Sanders

[Kaiser8408a]

Mortgage applications increased 5.3 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending April 7, 2023.

The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, increased 5.3 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index increased 6 percent compared with the previous week. The Refinance Index increased 0.1 percent from the previous week and was 57 percent lower than the same week one year ago. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 8 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index increased 9 percent compared with the previous week and was 31 percent lower than the same week one year ago.

The rest of the story.

[Kaiser8408a]

I blame Yellen for this. Keeping rates too low to protect Obama, then Powell has to raise rates to fight the inflation Yellen helped create.

[protoconservative]

Until the price breaks down 15% - 30% there is no good entry into this market in most places. The upper Midwest where home prices did not run up in 2020-2022 could be dragging this market in an investor driven condition of a few zip codes really lacking quality 250k-450k options.

There is a always a family with a set of kids that need to go to a better school and a couple of chumps ready to finance and that dream at 6.7%. They should also be concerned about that 7k property tax bill.

[Brian Griffin]

“kids that need to go to a better school”

I believe in Japan that teachers are rotated to even out school quality.

[Brian Griffin]

What the mortgagees could do is to let people assume low-interest (<4%) mortgages at say a 1% increase.

This would help make houses affordable for buyers and make mortgagees better off too.