Bank Foreclosures – Numbers Show Hope

With the entire country being in the midst of government and bank forclosures, and the viewing of undesirable numbers becoming the norm, it is numbers now, which provide the much needed ray of hope.

A report released earlier this month showed that in the last week of July the volume of applications filed for mortgages climbed slightly, increasing 2.8% in comparison to the week before.

However, in comparison with the same time period in 2007 there was a drop of 33% in applications. More than half of the country’s mortgage applications for retail residential homes were covered in the survey.

There was an increase of 4.4% when it came to applications involving home owners wanting to refinance existent home loans, and an increase of 1.8% was reported when it came to mortgage applications for buying homes.

Mortgages backed by the Federal Housing Administration have also seen an increased number of applications by home buyers. The index of government purchases in the report, which includes a large percentage of Federal Housing Administration loans, increased by 7.2%.

The moving average for a four week period for all home loans went down by 4.2%. Of all the applications received for mortgages in the last week of July, 35.9% were made up of applications to refinance, which rose from 35.2% in the week prior to that. The proportions of loans with adjustable rates of interest also went down from 7.3% to 6.9% when the last two weeks of July were compared.

The survey also reported the average interest rates for 30 year mortgages with fixed rates of interest was 6.41% in the last week of July as compared to 6.46% in the week before. The average rate for one year Adjustable Rate Mortgages also went down to 7.17% as compared to 7.25%.

These numbers do show some respite in the ongoing mortgage situation. Home owners facing government and bank foreclosures will hope that this healthy trend continues.