Mortgage Purchase Applications And Refinancing Jump 1%

Purchase applications rose 1.0 percent in the September 2 week after posting the same gain in the previous week, with the year-on-year gain increasing by 2 percentage points to 7 percent, still short of the double digit growth seen this year until July. Low rates continue to encourage applications to refinance, which also increased 1 percent in the week as the refinancing share of mortgage activity gained 0.5 percentage points to 64.00 percent. Rates were marginally higher from the previous week but still near record lows, up 1 basis point at 3.68 percent as the average interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages of conforming loans ($417,000 or less).