This morning the MBA announced Mortgage Refinance Applications Decrease. What stood out to me was this bit (emphasis in original):

The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages increased to 5.31 percent from 5.04 percent, with points decreasing to 0.64 from 1.07 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value (LTV) ratio loans. This is the highest 30-year rate recorded in the survey since the first week of August 2009. The effective rate also increased from last week.

I mentioned rising mortgage rates as a fear when the 10 year crept up to 4%. Well, the next day, the 10 year dropped a little. And today, $21 billion in new 10 year notes were going to be issued. I was a little afraid that the rate would rise back toward 4%. Fortunately, that was not the case. The yield was 3.9%. Demand was high, as the bid-to-cover ratio was the highest in the last nine years.

This doesn’t put us in the all-clear category for mortgages (again, rates went up and refi applications dropped). It does mean that doom hasn’t arrived, though. Mortgage rates were going to increase simply as a consequence of the Fed ending their purchase program at the end of March. Things could have been much worse.