It is likely no coincidence that standards are easing as rates rise and mortgage applications fall. Total mortgage applications were down 47 percent last week from a year ago. Refinances, which had been the banks bread and butter during the housing crash, are down 59 percent from a year ago. Applications to purchase a home are up just 5 percent.

“People see interest rates rise, they slow down some of that eagerness to get into the market,” said David Stevens, CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

(Read more: Map: Tracking the US real estate recovery)

Credit standards tightened dramatically over the past several years, as loose credit was largely blamed for the crash in housing. Average borrower credit scores on new loans are dramatically higher today, and lenders require larger down payments.

Even the FHA, the government mortgage insurer, which was created to help lower creditworthy borrowers, has raised its standards as well as its insurance premiums. Many lenders have overlays to their guidelines that they add on top of standard conventional guidelines. They could do that because refinances were so high, they needed to slow the volume in order to process all the loans.

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100939328

Existing home sales were basically flat in April, down close to one percent month-to-month and down nearly 13 percent year-over-ear, but you have to remember last year we were heavily under the influence of the home buyer tax credit.

Now we are heavily under the influence of the mortgage market, or lack thereof.

It’s all in the numbers.

Let’s start with all-cash.

Thirty-one percent of buyers in April used all-cash, and that’s down from 35 percent the previous month. It’s likely because the number of investors buying in April also fell. Investors have been the only real fuel in this market, buying distressed properties at distressed prices.

Just look at the share of what’s selling at what price point:

The low end is moving (your investors), and the high end is moving because higher-end folks don’t always need a mortgage; neither investors nor high-end buyers were affected by the home buyer tax credit last year. The trouble is, the middle of the market makes up the lions share of home sales, over 60 percent, and it’s not moving.

What’s also juicing the lower end is the fact that the FHA raised insurance premiums on April 18th, so mortgage applications for FHA loans surged 20 percent in the four weeks before and then fell nearly 27 percent the week after. With that surge, you would have thought we’d see a lot more sales, but that wasn’t the case.

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Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/43094968?__source=RSS*blog*&par=RSS