by Calculated Risk on 6/17/2009 07:47:00 AM

The MBA reports:

The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, was 514.4, a decrease of 15.8 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from 611.0 one week earlier.
...
The Refinance Index decreased 23.3 percent to 1998.1 from 2605.7 the previous week and the seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 3.5 percent to 261.2 from 270.7 one week earlier.
...
The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages decreased to 5.50 percent from 5.57 percent ...

The Purchase Index is now at the level of the late '90s.

With the 10 year yield moving down (3.67% yesterday from 3.99% a week ago), 30-year fixed mortgage rates decreased slightly this week. But mortgage rates are still significantly higher than three weeks ago (4.81%), and that increase in mortgage rates has led to significantly fewer refinance applications.

Click on graph for larger image in new window.

This graph shows the MBA Purchase Index and four week moving average since 2002.

Although we can't compare directly to earlier periods because of the changes in the index, this shows no pick up in overall sales activity.