Mortgage activity picked up this week as interest rates were lower. But jumbo mortgage prices worsened relative to conforming rates.
The conforming 30-year fixed-rate mortgage declined to 4.181 percent from 4.230 percent in the Mortech-Mortgage Daily Mortgage Market Index report for the week ended Wednesday. Meantime, the 30-year jumbo was unchanged at 5.070 percent — inflating the jumbo-conforming spread to 89 basis points from last week’s 84 BPS.
The Mortgage Market Index, itself, jumped to 311 from 288 seven days earlier. The improvement appears to be the work of rising refinances; the total refinance share moved up to 61 percent from 60 percent last week. This week’s share included a 46 percent rate-term share and a 15 percent cashout share.
The average U.S. loan amount rose to $214,267 from the previous week’s $212,501 — indicating average origination fees also increased. The highest average mortgage amount was Alaska’s $295,095, and the lowest was Nebraska’s $151,977.
