Applications for new home purchases increased 14% on an unadjusted basis in January compared with February, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Builder Application Survey (BAS).
Of the applications for loans for new homes that were submitted, about 67.4% were for conventional loans; 19.5% were for loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration FHA, about 0.7% were Rural Housing Service/U.S. Department of Agriculture loans composed and about 12.4% were Veterans Affairs loans.
The average loan size of a new home in January was $325,806, down from $333,182 in December.
The MBA estimates new single-family home sales were running at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 499,000 units in January.
On an unadjusted basis, the MBA estimates that there were 38,000 new home sales in January, an increase of 11.8% from about 34,000 in December.