More than six years have elapsed since the Monthly Treasury Average has been this high even as a more widely utilized index has retreated.
As of April, the MTA
worked out to 0.43833 percent based on a Mortgage Daily analysis of Federal Reserve Board data released Monday.
The index, which is used to determine rate and payment changes on a small share of adjustable-rate mortgages, was last this high in
February 2010, when it was 0.44083 percent.
MTA was 0.41083 percent in March 2016 and 0.15583 percent in April 2015.
The index is based on the daily average of the yield on the one-year Treasury note for each of the 12 most-recent months.
In April, the daily average for the one-year Treasury yield
was 0.56 percent.
As is the case with MTA, the one-year Treasury yield, itself, is also used as an ARM
index.
The one-year yield closed out last month
at 0.56 percent, according to Department of the Treasury data, down from 0.59 percent at the end of March.
ARMs accounted for
11.4 percent of all rate locks tracked in the U.S. Mortgage Market Index report from OpenClose and Mortgage Daily for the week ended April 29. ARM share widened substantially from 7.8 percent the previous week.