Refinance requests were up 4% for the week, while loan applications to buy a home were down 1%, according to the MBA’s seasonally adjusted indexes.
“Mortgage rates stayed below 4% for the second straight week and borrowers responded positively,” said Joel Kan, the MBA’s associate vice president of economic and industry forecasting. “Refinances have been strong this month, but we are starting to see the average pace slow compared to the peak experienced in August through October.”
Year-over-year differences in the data were more dramatic, but they were skewed by the fact that Thanksgiving fell a week earlier in 2018.