Mortgage interest rates creep up slightly

Home-buyers mortgage activity dropping…refinances make up 3/4 of all new mortgages.

Dennis Norman

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) released its weekly mortgage applications survey for the week ending December 11, 2009. The report showed the MBA Purchase Index (a measure of the volume of loan applications related to a home purchase) decreased 3.6 percent from the week before and is down 15.4 percent from a year ago.

For the past four weeks the seasonally adjusted Purchase Index is up 4.2 percent.

Homeowners taking advantage of near record-low interest rates and refinancing their existing mortgages continue to dominate the mortgage application activity jumping this week to 75.2 percent of loan applications for the week and making the highest refinance share of mortgage acitvity since April, 2009. ARM’s are not popular though, with their share of the mortgage activity dropping to just 4.1 percent, the lowest share since mid-June 2009.

Interest rates and fees for the week:

• 30 year fixed-rate mortgage interest rates increased to 4.92 percent from 4.88 percent the previous week, with fees decreasing slightly to 1.08 percent from 1.17 percent on loans that are 80 percent of the value of the home.
• 15 year fixed rate mortgage interest rates remained unchanged at 4.33 percent, with fees decreasing to .91 percent from 1.02 percent on loans that are 80 percent of the value of the home.
• One-year ARM interest rates decreased to 6.52 percent from 6.55 percent with fees increasing to 0.39 percent from 0.38 percent for loans that are 80 percent of the value of the home.

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