Applications for US home mortgages tumbled last week as interest rates climbed and refinancing requests fell back to November levels, an industry group said today.
The Mortgage Bankers Association said in a statement its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage application activity slumped 19.5 per cent to 653.8 in the week ended December 14th.
The decline was led by the MBA's seasonally adjusted index of refinancing applications which plunged 27.3 percent to 2,093.6 in the week, the MBA said, putting the index at the lowest level in four weeks.
The MBA's purchase index, a gauge of loan requests for home purchases, fell 10.6 percent to 422.2, also a four-week low, the MBA said.
One-year adjustable-rate mortgage rates jumped by 17 basis points on the week to 6.48 per cent, the highest since late August, as the crisis in short-term lending worsened, MBA data showed fixed 30-year mortgage rates averaged 6.18 per cent last week, up 11 basis points, the association said.