Americans were not rushing to fill out mortgage applications last week.
The Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 3.7% on a seasonally adjusted basis for the week ending May 26 compared to one week earlier; on an unadjusted basis, the index dropped 5%.
The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 3% and the unadjusted index took a 4% drop – the latter was also 31% lower than the same week one year ago. The Refinance Index fell 7% from the previous week and tumbled by 45% from the same week one year ago, while the refinance share of mortgage activity shrank to 26.7% of total applications from 27.4% in the previous week.
Among the federal programs, the FHA share of total applications increased to 12.7% from 12.5% in the week prior while the VA share decreased to 12.1% from 12.5% and the USDA share remained unchanged at 0.5%.
“Inflation is still running too high, and recent economic data is beginning to convince investors that the Federal Reserve will not be cutting rates anytime soon,” complained Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s senior vice president and chief economist.
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