MBA: Mortgage Refinance Applications down, Purchase Applications Up in Recent Survey

From the MBA: Mortgage Applications Decrease in Latest MBA Weekly Survey

Mortgage applications decreased 2.5 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending August 23, 2013. ...

The Refinance Index decreased 5 percent from the previous week. The Refinance Index has fallen 64.2 percent from its recent peak the week of May 3, 2013. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 2 percent from one week earlier.
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The refinance share of mortgage activity decreased to 60 percent of total applications from 61 percent the previous week, which is the lowest share observed since April 2011. ...

The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($417,000 or less) increased to 4.80 percent, the highest rate since April 2011, from 4.68 percent, with points decreasing to 0.41 from 0.42 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value ratio (LTV) loans.
emphasis added

Click on graph for larger image.

The first graph shows the refinance index.

Refinance activity has fallen sharply, decreasing in 14 of the last 16 weeks.

This index is down 64.2% over the last 16 weeks.   The last time the index declined this far was in late 2010 and early 2011 when mortgage increased sharply with the Ten Year Treasury rising from 2.5% to 3.5%.  We've seen a similar increase over the last few months with the Ten Year Treasury yield up from 1.6% to over 2.7% today.

The second graph shows the MBA mortgage purchase index.   The purchase index has increased for the last two weeks, and three of the last four.

The 4-week average of the purchase index has generally been trending up over the last year (but down over the couple of months), and the 4-week average of the purchase index is up about 6.7% from a year ago.