Thu, July 05, 2012
WASHINGTON, July 5 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. mortgage applications continued to drop in the week ending June 19 although mortgage rates remained at record lows, showed the latest Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey released Thursday by the U.S. Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA).
The association said that the Market Composite Index of U.S. mortgage applications, a measure of mortgage loan application volumes, fell 6.7 percent in the said week on a seasonally adjusted basis from the previous week.
The Refinance Index declined about eight percent from the previous week, with its share of mortgage activity falling to 78 percent of total applications. This was the lowest refinance share since June 1. Meanwhile, the seasonally adjusted Purchase Index rose less than one percent.
The association also noted that the average contract interest rate for 30-year edged down to 3.69 percent from 3.71 percent, while the interest rate for 15-year declined to 3.20 percent from 3.24 percent.
With constant modest improvement recently, the U.S. housing crash is said to be near the bottom. However, many economists hold that the market still needs years to recover entirely as the bottom will be prolonged.
