Loan applications for new homes rise in April

Mortgage applications for new home purchases picked up pace in April, a good sign for the housing market that struggled through the cold winter.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said Monday that the seasonally adjusted estimate for April was 5 percent higher than the revised March pace of 400,000 units.

{mosads}The sales pace for March was initially reported at 479,000.  

The MBA’s estimate of new single-family home sales was running at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 419,000 units in April, based on data from the Builder Application Survey.  

In a separate report, March sales of new single-family homes fell 14.5 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 384,000, the Census Bureau said in its latest data at the end of April.

On an unadjusted basis, the MBA estimates there were 42,000 new home sales in April, an increase of 8 percent from 39,000 in March.

The average loan size of new homes increased to $299,094 in April, from $296,428 in March.

The National Association of Home Builders will release its monthly housing market index on Thursday, and the Commerce Department is set to put out its housing starts and building permits data on Friday.