New home apps up in April

Applications for new home purchases rose in April, according to new data

Applications for new home purchases were up in April, according to data released Monday.

The Mortgage Bankers Association’s Builder Application Survey showed a 5% increase in mortgage applications for new home purchases. The change does not include any seasonal adjustment, according to the MBA.

Conventional loans made up 68.4% of all applications last month, according to the MBA. FHA loans accounted for 15.8%, USDA loans made up 1.6%, and VA loans composed 14.2%. the average loan size grew from $296,428 in March to $299,094 in April.

New single-family home sales were running at a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 419,000 units in April, according to MBA estimates. That’s a 5% jump from the downwardly revised March rate of 400,000 units.

On an unadjusted basis, there were about 42,000 new home sales in April, an 8% increase from March’s 39,000, the MBA estimates.