Florida Mortgage Applications Rise For Week

Florida mortgage applications rose slightly over the past week as a jump in refinancing demand overshadowed a drop in demand for loans to buy houses.

The Mortgage Bankers Association’s home loan application index climbed 0.9 percent to a seasonally adjusted 631.6 in the week ended July 13.

The Florida mortgage refinancing applications index increased 4.9 percent to a seasonally adjusted 1,717.4, more than offsetting a 1.6 percent drop in the purchase index to 446.5, the MBA said.

Borrowing costs on 30-year fixed-rate Florida mortgages, excluding fees, which averaged 6.65 percent, fell 0.04 percent to 6.61 percent.

Long-term mortgage rates, since early June, have been hovering at higher rates than anything seen since last summer.

Rising Florida mortgage costs are crimping affordability at a time when lenders are making it more difficult for buyers to get loans approved.

On a four-week moving average, which smooths out the near-term volatility of weekly Florida mortgage application rankings, all three of the MBA’s indexes dropped by less than 1 percent.

Mounting late payments and foreclosures, softening sales and falling prices have yet to take the beleaguered Florida housing market to a new low.

Nationally, U.S. home builder sentiment this month sank to its lowest level in about 16-1/2 years, the National Association of Home Builders said.

Builders are still grappling with huge stockpiles of unsold homes, even after months of slicing home prices and throwing in incentives to buyers.

Later on Wednesday, the Commerce Department will report further erosion in housing starts and permits to build homes, based on surveys of economists.

New construction likely dropped in the month of June because of the already unwieldy supply of unsold homes and tighter lending standards that further squeezed affordability and access to credit, economists said.

SOURCE: Reuters