Mortgage rates fell in November, stimulating mortgage applications

Dec 12, 2022

Mortgage rates more than doubled in 2022, but good news made an appearance in November, a positive sign for those buying or refinancing a home.

Tom Kalinski, RE/MAX of Boulder

Mortgage rates more than doubled in 2022, but good news made an appearance in November, a positive sign for those buying or refinancing a home.

Indeed, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage fell for the second week in a row in November, hitting 6.67% — down almost half a percentage point from its recent high of 7.16%, the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) reported.

Correspondingly, mortgage applications increased in the same period, rising 2.2% for the week ending November 18, according to weekly data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey.  While the Refinance Index increased 2% from the previous week, it is 86% lower than the same week one year ago.

“The decrease in mortgage rates should improve the purchasing power of prospective homebuyers, who have been largely sidelined as mortgage rates have more than doubled in the past year,” Joel Kan, MBA’s vice president and deputy chief economist, said in a statement reported Nov. 16, 2022. “As a result of the drop in mortgage rates, both purchase and refinance applications picked up slightly last week. However, refinance activity is still more than 80% below last year’s pace.”

The market composite index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, rose 2.2% for the week ending November 18 after registering a 2.7% increase in the previous week. Compared to the same week in 2021, however, the index fell 67.8%.

Purchase applications were up 2.76% the week of Nov. 23 compared to the previous week, but 41% down year over year. Meanwhile, the demand for refinance index, which dropped 86.2% year over year, increased 1.5% from the prior week.

Mortgage rates trended up alongside the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hike, but started to fall following lower-than-expected consumer price growth in October, as reported by HousingWire.com.

The consumer price index (CPI) rose by 7.7% year over year — the smallest 12-month increase since the period ending in January 2022, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Buyers and sellers nationwide are still on the sidelines, however. Data from Realtor.com shows that fewer homes were listed for sale in the week ending Nov. 19 compared with a year ago, which is the 20th straight week of yearly declines.

Fewer home sales are resulting in a much needed uptick in inventory. Here in Boulder County, single-family homes for sale in October 2022 grew more than four-fold to 874 vs. a mere 206 at the close of 2021, according to statistics from the Boulder-Longmont Realtors trade association (BOLO Realtors). Condominiums and townhomes for sale also increased, though the numbers remain strikingly low. In Oct. 2022, only 264 attached dwellings were for sale across Boulder County, compared to 74 in Dec. 2021.

For more information on the statistics see:

By Tom Kalinski. Tom is the broker/owner of RE/MAX of Boulder, the local residential real estate company he established in 1977. He was inducted into Boulder County’s Business Hall of Fame in 2016 and has a 40-year background in commercial and residential real estate. For questions, email Tom at [email protected], call 303.441.5620, or visit boulderco.com.