Posted by Joseph Y. Calhoun, III

Mortgage applications rose last week as mortgage rates fell back a bit:

WASHINGTON, D.C. (June 24, 2009) — The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) today released its Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending June 19, 2009.  The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, was 548.2, an increase of 6.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from 514.4 one week earlier.  On an unadjusted basis, the Index increased 6.0 percent compared with the previous week and increased 17.2 percent compared with the same week one year earlier.

The Refinance Index increased 5.9 percent to 2116.3 from 1998.1 the previous week and the seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 7.3 percent to 280.3 from 261.2 one week earlier. 
 
The four week moving average for the seasonally adjusted Market Index is down 9.3 percent.  The four week moving average is up 2.2 percent for the seasonally adjusted Purchase Index, while this average is down 15.5 percent for the Refinance Index.

The refinance share of mortgage activity decreased to 54.0 percent of total applications from 54.1 percent the previous week. The adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) share of activity decreased to 4.1 percent from 4.3 percent of total applications from the previous week.

The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages decreased to 5.44 percent from 5.50 percent, with points increasing to 0.99 from 0.89 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value (LTV) ratio loans.

The average contract interest rate for 15-year fixed-rate mortgages decreased to 4.93 percent from 4.99 percent, with points decreasing to 0.92 from 0.99 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent LTV loans.

The average contract interest rate for one-year ARMs remained unchanged at 6.54 percent, with points increasing to 0.11 from 0.09 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent LTV loans.

It looks like people are adjusting to the rise in mortgage rates. The housing market has been in a bottoming process for the last 9 months and inventory is slowly declining. We’ll get new home sales at 10 this morning.