After a small surge earlier in November, applications for home mortgages lost momentum in the latest reading from the Mortgage Bankers Association [1] (MBA).
MBA's Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey [2], a closely watched measure of application volumes, dropped 4.3 percent for the week ending November 21, the group said Wednesday. The decline followed a 4.9 percent bump during the previous week [3], which included an adjustment for Veterans Day.
According to the association, applications for refinancing fell 4 percent week-over-week, showing little life even as mortgage interest rates continued to fall. The group's measure for the 30-year average fixed rate was 4.15 percent for the week, down from 4.18 percent previously.
Even with the latest drop, the refinance share of total mortgage applications rose to 63 percent from 61 percent the week prior.
On the purchase loan side, applications declined 5 percent in MBA's reading, indicating more weakness in an already anemic purchase loan market. Unadjusted, the group's purchase application index rose 1 percent week-to-week but was still 10 percent lower than this time last year.
After rising in the last survey, apparent demand for government-backed loans lost steam last week. According to MBA, the share of total applications for loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) decreased to 9.4 percent, while the share of applications for mortgages insured by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) dropped to 10.3 percent.