Applications for mortgages for new home purchases decreased 8% in July compared with June but increased 2.4% compared with July 2015, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Builder Applications Survey (BAS).
In a release, Lynn Fisher, vice president of research and economics for the MBA, says the month-over-month decrease in applications is “part of the normal seasonal pattern this time of year.”
She adds that the BAS “has not maintained the momentum we saw during February and March.”
About 68.5% of loan applications were for conventional mortgages, while 17.2% were for loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration. About 13.6% were Veterans Affairs loans, while about 0.7% were U.S. Department of Agriculture/Rural Housing Service loans.
The average loan size for a new home in July was $325,843, down from $326,175 in June.
Sales of new single-family homes were running at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of about 540,000 units in July – an increase of 1.9% compared with the June pace of about 530,000 units, the MBA estimates.
On an unadjusted basis, the MBA estimates that there were 45,000 new home sales in July – a decrease of 4.3% from 47,000 new home sales in June.