Mortgage Purchase Apps At 18-Year Low and New Home Sales At 5-Year High

The housing data has been all over the place so far in 2014. The good news today is new home sales jumped nearly 10% month-over-month to a five year high level of 468K for January. Strength in new home sales was led by the South while new houses sold in the Midwest and West are actually negative on a year-over-year basis. The bad news today is that mortgage applications for purchase last week dropped to it's lowest level since the week of August 25th, 1995. Mortgage rates rose slightly last week but are still lower year to day.