While new weekly refinance activity slowed for the second week in a row, purchase-money business turned higher. Jumbo business had a healthy week-over-week gain.
A 3 percent decline from the previous week left the U.S. Mortgage Market Index from OpenClose and Mortgage Daily at 169 for the week that ended on Aug. 26.
Still, the index — a representation of average per-user rate locks submitted by clients of Open Close — has ascended 17 percent compared to the same week last year.
Losing the most ground from the week ended Aug. 19, 2016, were rate locks for adjustable-rate mortgages — sinking a third. ARM activity has plummeted 57 percent from a year ago — the largest year-over-year decline.
ARMs accounted for 5.0 percent of total activity in the latest report. ARM share was cut from 7.3 percent a week earlier and slashed from 13.6 percent a year earlier.
The Refinance MMI tumbled 9 percent from the previous week, when it was also down. But there was a 42 percent increase from the week ended Aug. 28, 2015.
Refinance share thinned to 40.1 percent from 42.7 percent but was wider than the revised one-third this week in 2015. The most-recent share consisted of a 25.7 percent rate-term share and a 14.3 percent cashout share.
An 8 percent decline from the prior week was noted for the Government MMI. Government share was trimmed to 30.5 percent from 32.1 percent one week prior.
Rate locks for mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration made up 21.8 percent of this week’s government share, and rate locks for loans guaranteed by the Department of Veterans Affairs accounted for the other 8.7 percent.
Conventional mortgage business dipped less than a percent from the last report.
Unlike refinances, rate locks for purchase financing inched up 2 percent from the report issued seven days earlier. Purchase activity was up 5 percent from the revised level one year previous.
The best performance was delivered by jumbo rate locks, with the volatile Jumbo MMI surging
15 percent from a week earlier but tumbling by a fifth from a year earlier.
Jumbo rate locks accounted for 8.9 percent of total activity. Jumbo share widened from 7.5 percent the prior week but was sliced from 13.0 percent a year prior.
Interest rates on jumbo mortgages were 7 basis points more than conforming rates. The jumbo-conforming spread thinned from 10 BPS during the last seven-day period and swung from a negative 28 BPS the same week last year.
Conforming fixed rates averaged 3.43 percent, the same as in the last report and 41 BPS better than a year ago.
Fifteen-year rates were 69 BPS less than their 30-year counterparts. The spread was the same as in the last report and thinner than 78 BPS in the year-earlier report.
Mortgage rates are unlikely to be much different in the next Mortgage Market Index report based on a Mortgage Daily analysis of Treasury market activity.
