September 4, 2015
Friday’s Government Reports
- The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has reported an uptick in mortgage rates from June to July 2015. This is according to the Monthly Interest Rate Survey (MIRS), which measures several indices of new mortgage contracts to arrive at a national average. July’s average was 4.02% up 17 basis points from June’s 3.8%.
- The FHFA has also released its second quarter Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) refinance results. According to the report refinances remained unchanged between the first and second quarters of 2015, 31,561 borrowers refinanced with HARP funds, which represented 5% of all U.S. refinances. HARP was established in 2009 in order to assist homeowners unable to refinance because of a decline in their home value. As of March the FHFA estimated that there were over 500,000 borrowers eligible for the HARP program.
- Also according to the FHFA house prices rose 1.2% from the first to the second quarter (Q2) of 2015 and are up more that 5% over Q2 201. This is according FHFA’s House Price Index (HPI) which has been up for the last 16 consecutive quarters.
