Mortgage Application Volumes Pick Up

After experiencing a post-holiday decline, applications for home mortgages picked up again last week, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported.

MBA's Market Composite Index, a weekly measure of mortgage loan application volumes, bumped up 2.4 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis for the week ending July 18, the group said.

Unadjusted, the index performed slightly better, climbing 3 percent week-over-week.

Most of the uptick came from an increase in refinance application activity, which was up an unadjusted 4 percent from the previous week. That bump brought the refinance share of mortgage activity up to 54.4 percent of total applications, the highest share since March.

Meanwhile, the seasonally adjusted Purchase Index rose 0.3 percent. Removing seasonal adjustments, the index ticked up 1 percent and was 15 percent lower than the same time last year.

For the week, MBA's measure for the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage interest rate remained more or less unchanged at 4.33 percent, with points increasing to 0.23 for 80 percent loan-to-value ratio loans, the group reported.