Mortgage Applications to Buy Homes Rise
By REUTERS
Filed at 7:02 a.m. ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Applications for loans to buy homes in the United States rose last week, while the number of mortgage refinancings fell, according to an industry survey.
The Mortgage Bankers Association of America said on Wednesday its seasonally adjusted measure of demand for loans to buy homes, the purchase index, rose 5.8 percent to 432.4.
The trade group's measure of demand for refinancings, the
refinance index, fell 15.4 percent to 2,438.5 while a gauge of overall mortgage lending, the market index, fell 5.8 percent to 726.7 in the Sept. 12 week.
``Refinancing has essentially ceased,'' said Chris Low, chief economist at FTN Financial.
The contract rate for the most commonly used home loan, the 30-year mortgage, dipped to 5.91 percent from 5.99 percent last week, the association said. |
