Daily Commentary by Larry Baer: The
Commerce Department reported earlier this morning the pace of new home sales in
June fell by the most in more than a year.
New Home sales tumbled 8.4% -- marking its largest monthly decline since
February 2011. The new home sales figure
for May was revised higher by 13,000 units - which took a little of the sting
out of the otherwise poor showing for June.
This data continues to reinforce the broadly held view among mortgage
investors that housing continues to be challenged by high unemployment and
stringent lending conditions. While the
June new home sales figure was notably softer than had been expected - the
reaction in the credit markets was muted as participants are become
increasingly calloused to one more report falling in line with an already
long-running string of very weak economic numbers.
As they do every Wednesday, the Mortgage
Bankers of America have released their Mortgage Application Survey figures for
the week ended July 20th.
Overall mortgage application activity rose 0.9% for the period - driven
by a 1.8% increase in refinance requests.
In contrast, the number of requests for purchase-money mortgages
declined by 3.2% on a week-over-week basis.
Refinance applications accounted for 80.8% of all applications and 79.4%
of the prospective loan volume.
The contract rate for 30-year fixed-rate
conforming mortgages finished at 3.74%, unchanged from the prior week but down
14 basis-points from the month-ago mark and down 88 basis-points from this time
one-year ago.
THE
MARKET IS ALWAYS RIGHT! . YOU AND I ARE SOME OF THE TIME
