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Thursday August 3, 12:07 AM
Home loan demand sinks to four-year low
By Julie Haviv
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. mortgage applications last week sank to their lowest level in over four years, an industry trade group said on Wednesday, further evidence that the once robust U.S. housing market is weakening.
The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage application activity, which includes both refinancing and purchasing loans, for the week ended July 28 decreased 1.2 percent to 527.6 -- its lowest since May 2002 -- from the previous week's 533.8.
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Drew Matus, senior financial economist at Lehman Brothers in New York, said that while the indexes are volatile on a weekly basis, they point to a sector that is softening.
"The data suggest that the housing market is cooling and it's cooling pretty substantially," he said. "The question is how much of an impact is it going to have on the economy and that's what we really don't understand at this point."
Matus expects U.S. economic growth in the second half of this year to be slowed by about three-quarters of a percentage point due to the direct effects of softer housing investment.
Nearly all recent measures of housing activity have pointed not just to a slowdown, but to a struggling sector. Sales are sliding, supply is swelling and price appreciation is abating.
Many analysts view the housing market as a key factor in Federal Reserve policy. With a slower housing market, growth in the United States should level off as well, which may set the stage for a halt to the Fed's two-year program of monetary tightening.
The next Fed policy-making meeting will be on August 8.
INTEREST RATES SLIDE
It was the third straight week that overall mortgage activity slumped, despite a decline in interest rates during that period.
Last week, borrowing costs on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, excluding fees, averaged 6.62 percent, down 0.07 percentage point from the previous week, and 0.19 percentage point below the 6.81 percent rate in the first week of July.
The MBA's seasonally adjusted purchase index tumbled for the third straight week, falling 3.3 percent to 376.2, its lowest since November 2003.
The purchase index, widely considered a timely gauge of U.S. home sales, is standing well below its year-ago level of 494.5, a drop of nearly 24 percent.
The group's seasonally adjusted index of refinancing applications increased 2.3 percent to 1,417.2, down 37 percent from a year ago when the index stood at 2,250.3.
The refinance share of applications increased to 37.0 percent from 35.6 percent the previous week. Fixed 15-year mortgage rates averaged 6.28 percent, down from 6.31 percent the previous week.
ADJUSTABLE SHARE AT 2-YEAR LOW
Adjustable-rate mortgages, known as ARMs, have been a refuge for cash-strapped consumers seeking to buy a home with low initial mortgage payments.
But with the U.S. Federal Reserve raising interest rates for two years straight, many of these homeowners will face a sharp increase in their monthly payments when their ARMs eventually reset.
As this transpires, an increase in loan delinquencies and home foreclosures is expected, which analysts say may weigh heavily on the housing market.
Rates on one-year ARMs decreased to 6.18 percent from 6.25 percent. The ARM share of activity fell to 27.8 percent of total applications -- its lowest since March 2004 -- from 28.6 percent in the prior week.
After historically low mortgage rates fueled a five-year housing boom, most analysts agree that the market is cooling off from its record run.
"The cooling in housing could last for a year or two," said Matus. "But remember, even when mortgage rates were at 18 percent, people were still buying new homes, so there is a natural trend of demand for housing and it takes a lot more than what we have seen so far to push around that natural trend."
Signs of a cooling market have been more evident in the past few weeks as a deluge of data showed an excessive supply of homes, declining sales and falling prices.
The MBA's survey covers about 50 percent of all U.S. retail residential mortgage loans. Respondents include mortgage bankers, commercial banks and thrifts.
