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Freddie Mac issued its Weekly Mortgage Market Survey on December 22, a day earlier than usual because of the oncoming holiday.
Rates, fees, and points remained relatively stable for yet another week. The average 30 year and 15 year rates were up slightly to 5.75% and 5.18% respectively, compared to 5.68% and 5.11% for the December 16 report. The one year adjustable dropped .01% to 4.17%.
Average points and fees for all three types of mortgages were 0.6, unchanged for the two fixed categories but down 0.1 for the one year ARM.
A second report, The Mortgage Bankers Association's Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey covers approximately 50% of all U.S. retail residential mortgage originations. This report for the week ended December 17 showed slightly lower contract mortgage rates than Freddie Mac. 30 year rates were 5.69%, up from 5.65 the week before, 15 year rates were 5.11%, up from 5.04% and 1-year ARMs increased to 4.15% from 4.10.
The MBA report, however, showed a much higher range of points and fees than Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac does not, in its report, define its terms for fees while MBA includes origination fees and covers loans with up to 80% LTV. 30 year fees increased to 1.39 from 1.28 the previous week. 15 year fees were at 1.28, up .04 and one year ARMs decreased to .98 from .99.
The report showed that its Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume was 689.3, an increase of 0.1 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from the index one week earlier. Refinances constituted 48.9% of the mortgage market, up 2.1% from the previous week and the ARM share rose .2 to 34.4%
Also last week the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Housing and Urban Development jointly released their monthly report of new residential sales for November, 2004.
Sales of new homes for the month were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,125,000. This is a 12% decrease from the revised October number of 1,278,000 but up 3.6% from November sales one year ago.
New home sold in November brought a median price of $206,300 and an average of $268,100.
The report estimated that there were 418,000 new homes for sale nationally at the end of November, an approximate inventory of 4.5 months compared to 4.0 at the end of November 2003.
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