Applications for new home purchases increased 12% on an unadjusted basis in February compared to January, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA) Builder Application Survey.
By product type, conventional loans represented 65.4% of applications for new purchases while Federal Housing Administration loans represented 20.7%, Rural Housing Service/U.S. Department of Agriculture loans represented 1.2% and Veterans Affairs loans represented 12.7%.
The increase comes after applications for new home purchases jumped 29%, month over month, in January.
The average loan size of a new home in February was $311,379, up from $304,364 in January.
Lynn Fisher, vice president of research and economics for the MBA, says the increase in applications for mortgage for new homes ‘bodes well for new home purchases this year.’
The MBA estimates new single-family home sales were running at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of about 487,000 units in February – a decrease of 8.1% compared to the January pace of about 530,000 units.
On an unadjusted basis, the MBA estimates that there were about 42,000 new home sales in February, an increase of 7.7% from about 39,000 in January.