Residential housing credit availability tightened to levels last seen 10 years ago during February as conventional product offerings were pulled off the market.
February's Mortgage Credit Availability Index is 100.1, down from
"The conforming subindex decreased 4.3% to its lowest level in the survey, which goes back to 2011," said Joel Kan, the MBA's deputy chief economist, in a press release. "This decline was driven by the ongoing trend of shrinking industry capacity as mortgage rates stayed significantly higher than a year ago."
The conventional index, which includes conforming loans, was down 4.4% from January; the jumbo component was down 4.4%.
While government-guaranteed product availability also tightened during the month, it was off by just 1.6%.
"Additionally, in this volatile rate environment and potentially weakening economy, there was also a reduction in refinance programs offered for low credit score and high loan-to-value borrowers," Kan said.
While mortgage rates slipped to 6.09% from the start of the year
The market's initial reaction to the collapse of
On March 9, the Optimal Blue rate tracker for the 30-year conforming was at 6.799%, while for jumbos it was 6.744% and the Federal Housing Administration-insured mortgage rate was at 6.639%. By March 13, the conforming loan averaged 6.537%, while for jumbos it fell to 6.479% and FHA, 6.642%.
But after the Consumer Price Index report came out on Tuesday morning and the 6% annual increase was in line with expectations, the 10-year moved back up by 14 basis points by noon. to 3.65%. According to Zillow's rate tracker, the 30-year FRM was up 4 basis points from 6.35% to 6.39% by midday Tuesday.
