And here is for interesting news; the Mortgage Bankers Association reports that application volume increases.

The Market Composite Index increased 4.9 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from a week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, it was down 24.9 percent compared with the same week one year earlier.   The seasonally-adjusted Purchase Index increased by 3.4 percent and the Refinance Index increased by 7.1 percent from one week earlier.

While mortgage rates decreased, the average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages decreased to 6.45 percent from 6.62 percent and the average contract interest rate for one-year ARMs decreased to 5.96 percent from 6.18 percent.

We all know that purchase activity was especially strong in the Summer and early Fall of 2005 which makes for an ugly comparison. The year-to-date purchase activity is off 12.1% compared to 2005.  Even though there was a small increase in activity last week, the previous week was the least market activity since May 2002.

These numbers were taken from Calculated Risk.