According to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA’s) Builder Application Survey (BAS), the number of mortgages for newly constructed homes plunged 16.2% from September 2020. The number of applications fell 4% from the previous month. There is no explanation for the drop in the number of applications.

MBA estimates the volume of applications and assumptions regarding the type and coverage of the market and other data used to estimate that new single-family home sales were at an annualized rate of 843,000 units in September, as compared to the monthly rate of 874,000 units in August. Approximately 66,000 newly constructed homes were sold in August, down 7% from an estimate of 71,000.

Associate Vice President of Economic and Industry Forecasting of MBA, Joel Kan, sees its highly rated average loan size of $408,522 as evidence of higher sales prices due to these higher home costs.

Despite a decrease in new home sales last month after a strong August reading, the data for the two months as a whole is the best since January 2021, according to a report by the New York Times.

A majority of home loans were conventional during April, accounting for 75.1% of all loans. Only 13.9% were FHA loans and 10.5% were VA loans, and 0.5% were Rural Home Service loans. It is worth noting that the size of mortgage loans declined from $406,922 in August to $408,522 in September.

MBA provides a national, state and metro-level estimate of new home sales volumes based on these data and data from other sources.

The Census Bureau estimates recent home sales every month by analyzing the signing of purchase contracts, which often coincide with mortgage applications. The Census Bureau will be publishing a report on the number of new homes sold at the end of September, released on October 26th.