Except for a hybrid adjustable-rate loan program, mortgage rates rose. Reacting to last week’s decline in rates, 1003 application volume inched higher.
Rising 6 basis points from last week, the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 5.20% in Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey for the week ended July 23. The 30-year was 6.63% a year ago.
Mortgage rates tend to move with the yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which was 3.648% today, up from 3.573% during trading a week ago.
But don’t expect much movement in rates based on projections by Bankrate.com panelists for the week July 23 to July 29; nearly half expected rates to stay within 2 BPS of their current levels during the upcoming 35 to 45 days. The remaining panelists were evenly split — 27% each — over whether rates would rise or fall.
Freddie said the average 15-year fixed-rate mortgage was 4.68%, 5 BPS more than the previous week.
But the five-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage averaged 4.74% — 9 BPS better than a week earlier.
The one-year Treasury-indexed ARM was up 0.01% from a week ago to average 4.77 percent. The underlying index — the yield on the one-year Treasury bill — closed yesterday at 0.47%, lower than 0.50% seven days earlier.
A popular subprime ARM index, the London Interbank Offered Rate, was 0.96% yesterday, Bankrate.com reported. Last week LIBOR was 0.98%.
Borrower demand for ARMs decreased to 4.8 percent of applications tracked in the Mortgage Bankers Association Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending July 17 from 5.0% the previous week.
Driven by a 4% rise in refinance applications, overall applications were up 3% on a seasonally adjusted basis, bringing MBA’s Market Composite Index to 528.9. The index was up 7% from a year ago.
Purchase applications were up 1%, and the refinance share rose to 56% from the prior week’s 55%.
