Mortgage applications for new home purchases increased by 24% on an unadjusted basis in February compared with January, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Builder Application Survey (BAS).
By product type, conventional loans composed 67.7% of total loan applications, Federal Housing Administration loans composed 18.7%, Rural Housing Service/U.S. Department of Agriculture loans composed 0.85%, and Veterans Affairs loans composed 12.8%.
The average loan size was about $328,370 in February – up from $325,806 in January.
“Mortgage applications to home builder affiliates increased across the board in our survey for February, as continued low interest rates and fairly mild weather helped to kick off the spring buying season,” says Lynn Fisher, vice president of research and economics for the MBA. “Our estimate of new single-family home sales for February comes in at 544,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis – nearly 12 percent above February a year ago.”
Sales of new single-family homes were running at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of about 544,000 units in February, according to data from the BAS. That’s an increase of 9% compared with the January pace of 499,000 units.
On an unadjusted basis, the MBA estimates that there were 47,000 new home sales in February – an increase of 23.7% from 38,000 in January.