Tag Archives: Mortgage Rates

Mortgage rates broke their streak of weekly declines, climbing this week as the federal budget deadline approached.

The Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA) Market Composite Index increased 0.3 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis for the week ending October 11.

Homebuyer interest picked up slightly in September, but the number of customers willing to pull the trigger on purchasing declined substantially, Redfin reported in its latest Real-Time Demand Pulse. The number of buyers requesting home tours from Redfin agents rose 0.2 percent from August, turning up from a steady downward spiral that started in May. Meanwhile, the number of homebuyers submitting offers fell 11.8 percent, the largest monthly drop Redfin has recorded all year.

Fixed mortgage rates held more or less steady this week as Capitol Hill remained locked in debate over budgetary concerns. According to data in Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 4.23 percent (0.7 point) for the week ending October 10, just up from 4.22 percent last week. A year ago at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 3.39 percent. Meanwhile, Bankrate.com recorded a fifth consecutive week of declines for fixed rates in its weekly national survey.

According to Lender Processing Services' data, the monthly prepayment rate--historically a good indicator of refinance activity--has dipped more than 30 percent in the months since May, with mortgage interest rates climbing nearly 100 basis points in that same time. As a result of those shifts, the percentage of borrowers in loans with interest rates high enough for refinancing to make sense has dropped significantly, says Herb Blecher, SVP for the technology and analytics firm.

While consumers are still "generally positive" on average about housing and the economy, attitudes over the last few months suggest optimism has hit a plateau, Fannie Mae says. While September's survey results show attitudes leading up to the October shutdown, they do not necessarily reveal its full effects (or those of the pending debt ceiling debate), the company noted. Those results should be seen in the surveys for October and the following months.

Trulia is the latest company to report a monthly slowdown in home prices--and trends indicate yearly gains may soon cool as well. "Asking home prices give us the first look at where home sale prices are headed, and they point to a slowdown," said Trulia chief economist Jed Kolko. "After rising rapidly in the first half of 2013, asking prices in two thirds of the largest metros are cooling. In fact, asking prices are falling--not just rising more slowly--in 11 of the 100 largest metros, the most markets to see prices slip in six months."

Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey showed average fixed rates dropping for the third straight week, with the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaging 4.22 percent (0.7 point) for the week ending October 3, down a tenth of a percentage point. In addition to the government shutdown (which threatens to shave points off of GDP growth in Q4 if allowed to continue much longer), rates were brought down by a slip in consumer sentiment in September.

National home prices will rise 4.8 percent over the next year, according to a third-quarter forecast from Veros Real Estate Solutions, a risk management, valuation services, and analytics firm based in Santa Ana, California. Regionally, Veros predicts continued strengthening in the West and a lag in the Northeast and parts of the South. The top 10 markets labeled by Veros' forecast are all located in Western states: Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.

Using weekly data released by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), Capital Economics economist Paul Diggle calculated a 7.7 percent drop in mortgage applications from August to September.