Blog: Fewer People Refinance Mortgage Loans, MBA Reports

Added May 13, 2009 by Melanie G. Rogers

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For the week ending May 8, the number of mortgage applications filed fell by 8.6 percent from a week earlier, reported the Mortgage Bankers Association today.

MBA's Refinance Index dropped by 11.2 percent while the Purchase Index increased by 0.5 percent from a week earlier, on a seasonally adjusted basis.

The four-week moving average is up 0.2 percent for the Purchase Index and down 6.5 percent for the Refinance Index.

If you've been reading Ilyce's refinancing articles, you know what to look for when refinancing your mortgage loan. You want to lower your interest rate, lower your monthly payment and shorten the length of your loan. You want be able to recover the refinancing fees that the mortgage lender charges within a reasonable amount of time.

It's possible that home owners are finding that they just can't achieve these things now. Or that they're losing jobs and unable to show income for a new loan.

Still, the majority of loan traffic is refinancing, MBA reports - 71.9 percent of total applications tracked were refinances.

Here are MBA's average mortgage loan interest rates for the week ending May 8:

30-year fixed rate mortgage - 4.76 percent, down from 4.79 percent
15-year fixed rate mortgage - 4.50 percent, down from 4.57 percent
1-year adjustable rate mortgage - 6.41 percent, up from 6.36 percent

May 13, 2009

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