Florida Home Mortgage Loan Applications Up

Demand for Florida mortgages increased over the past week, as both conventional home purchase loan and mortgage refinance activity picked up, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported.

In its seasonally adjusted index of Florida mortgage application activity, statewide demand rose 3.2 percent to 631.1 in the week ending January 26, after dropping 8.4 percent the previous week.

For reference, that’s 0.7 percent higher than a year earlier.

The seasonally adjusted purchase index advanced 1.3 percent to 408.0, which was 6.4 percent below its year-ago level. This Florida home loan reading is considered a timely gauge of home sales.

The group’s seasonally adjusted refinancing application index grew 4.9 percent to 1,940.2, sending it 11 percent higher than a year earlier.

Four-week moving averages of these readings, which help put weekly readings in perspective, as they tend to be more volatile, were up 2.2 percent for the market index, 0.1 percent for the Florida mortgage purchase index and 4.0 percent for the refinance index.

Borrowing costs on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, excluding origination fees or points, rose 0.07 percent to average 6.29 percent for the week. The going rate was up just slightly from 6.20 percent a year earlier.

The share of applications dedicated solely to Florida mortgage refinancing dropped slightly in the past seven days to 47.4 percent from 47.8 percent a week earlier.

The share of adjustable-rate mortgages climbed to 21.4 percent from 20.3 percent. But while the average fixed Florida mortgage rates rose, ARMs (or adjustable-rate mortgages) trended the opposite way.

Statewide, average rates on one-year adjustable-rate mortgages, for example, dipped to 5.86 percent from 5.91 percent the previous week.