Mortgage rates from the beginning
Applications increased 25. 6 percent from the week prior and the level of activity has not been this high since June 2003. There have been so many applications for mortgage refinancing that some analysts in the housing sector say that it is causing a tiny boom in real estate. It would be a larger one, they say, if new lending practices were not so tight and values were not so low. Value decreases have caused decreases in homeowner equity, and in some cases homeowners now own so little equity that they are not eligible for mortgage refinancing.