Mortgage loan application volume to finance the purchase of a home in the U.S. was only 41 percent lower on a year-over-year basis last week versus 46 percent lower the week before, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey data.
At the same time, the median loan amount, which peaked at $340,000 this past February and is a leading indicator of home values, dropped to $295,000 last month, which is down 13.2 percent over the past eight months and the lowest median loan amount since January of last year (2021).
And despite the misguided notion that buyers would simply flock to ARMs in order to offset the jump in the average 30-year mortgage rate, which remains over twice as high as at the same time last year, the share of ARM applications actually dropped to 8.8 percent last week as buyers borrowed/paid less in response to the rising cost of capital rather than turning to lower shorter-term rates in order to offset the “affordability” hit on a leveraged basis.
There is a lot of excitement around lower cost manufactured homes with a new financing model that doesn’t involve interest rates or down payments. No, this isn’t internet spam or “mortgage brokers hate this one weird trick”. Venture capital is focusing in on startups to get the middle class back into homes and all the macro data proves it. Exciting time to tap a new market.