It was the second good week in a row for the mortgage market. Rates eased, refinances rose and new activity picked up. In addition, the jumbo-conforming spread saw a big improvement.
A measure of upcoming mortgage originations, the Mortech-Mortgage Daily Mortgage Market Index, was up for the week ended Wednesday to 223 from 184 in the previous week that included the New Years holiday.
During the same week last year, the index was higher at 256.
Behind improvement in weekly activity was a rise in refinances; the refinance share of this week’s activity climbed to 53 percent from 51 percent last week. The latest rate-term share was 38 percent, while the cashout share was 16 percent.
Pushing refinance business higher was improved interest rates.
The conforming 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 1 basis point lower than last week at 4.859 percent. The jumbo 30-year, however, was more aggressive in its decline — falling 13 BPS to 5.60 percent. The bigger jumbo movement slashed the spread between the conforming and jumbo 30-year rates to 74 BPS from last week’s 86Â BPS.
In the report for the week ended Jan. 13, 2010, the jumbo-conforming spread was much wider at 113 BPS.
The average U.S. mortgage amount rose to $206,602 from $203,918. The average was $207,109 at this point in 2010.
Hawaii’s $298,224 average this week was the highest of all states, and South Dakota’s $147,985 was lowest.
