At a time of the year when industry folks and the media have been known to conflate basic seasonal trends with a market rebound or “pivot!,” purchase mortgage application volume in the U.S. ticked up 4 percent over the past week.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, however, purchase mortgage activity actually ticked down 3 percent and was down 12 percent on a year-over-year basis.
And with purchase mortgage activity having dropped 43 percent from 2022 to 2023, purchase mortgage activity is still down over 50 percent from 2022 to 2024, as are pending home sales in San Francisco, none of which should catch any plugged-in readers by surprise.