MBA Mortgage Applications

The MBA Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey is a private survey, not a government statistic, run weekly since 1990. It comes from the Research and Economics Division of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). It covers over 75% of US closed-end single-family applications through retail and consumer-direct channels, excluding wholesale broker and correspondent channels.

Respondents include mortgage bankers, commercial banks and credit unions, whose names stay undisclosed. It reports index levels showing change only, never raw counts, dollar volumes, closings or home sales.

Applications are collected from Saturday 00:00 through Friday 23:59 before the release week. Results appear every Wednesday at 7:00 a.m. ET. Short weeks carry holiday adjustments for six holidays: New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Around Christmas and New Year one release covers two weeks, with index changes measured against two weeks earlier. Each release shows 15 indices with weekly percent changes, rates and points for 5 products, refinance, ARM and FHA/VA/USDA shares, loan sizes and economist commentary. Every release is final, with no revisions.

Purchase demand follows interest rates, home prices, credit availability, seasonality and economic strength. Refinancing follows rates, home values and lending standards.

• Market Composite Index: all weekly mortgage applications, adjusted and unadjusted.
• Purchase Index: applications to buy single-family homes, conventional and government, across all products.
• Refinance Index: applications to refinance existing mortgages, the best gauge of refinancing activity, with holiday adjustment only.
• Conventional Index: all conventional purchase and refinance applications across all products and loan amounts.
• Government Index: all FHA, VA and USDA rural housing applications covering purchases and refinances.
• FRM and ARM: fixed-rate products and adjustable-rate products for purchases and refinances.

In the release of October 18, 2023, covering the week ending October 13, 2023, the Market Composite Index fell 6.9% on a seasonally adjusted basis. Applications sank to their lowest level since 1995. The Purchase Index fell 6% for the week and 21% from a year earlier.

The Refinance Index fell 10% for the week and 12% from a year earlier. Economist Joel Kan linked the drop to a 30-year fixed rate of 7.70%, the highest since November 2000. Even as the headline fell, the ARM share rose to 9.3%, an 11-month high, while the refinance share fell to 30.5% from 31.6%.

1. Unadjusted index: Count applications this week and last, where weekly change equals ((this week divided by last week) minus 1) times 100. For example, 1100 rising to 1250 applications gives 13.63% growth, moving an index of 125.5 to 142.6, for illustration only.

1. Seasonal and holiday adjustment: Purchase and Market indices remove calendar effects with a model-based spectral method in the frequency domain. Refinance indices take holiday adjustment only and never seasonal adjustment. Rates, loan sizes and shares are never adjusted.

1. Rates: Lenders report locked pricing from the prior week, not posted rates. Rates are simple averages after removing outliers, and a lender counts only with a minimum number of applications of that type. Conventional rates assume an 80% loan-to-value share, while FHA loans carry higher ratios.

1. Covered products: Published rates cover 5 products: 30-year conforming fixed, 15-year fixed, 30-year jumbo fixed only, 5/1 ARM and FHA 203(b) fixed only. Points combine origination fees and discount points, with 1 point equal to 1% of the loan. The effective rate adds points assuming early payoff, which spreads points over fewer years and raises the cost.

1. Loan size: Average loan size equals total dollar volume divided by application count.

1. Benchmarking: All unadjusted indices equaled 100 in the base week of March 16, 1990. The expanded sample was set equal to old values on January 14, 2011 and built forward with new-sample changes. Reporting switched to the expanded sample in September 2011.