WASHINGTON—Mortgage credit access tightened for the second straight month in March, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Mortgage Credit Availability Index (MCAI).
The MBA said the Index declined 1.5% to 177.9 compared to February and has lost 5.0 points since January. The Index was benchmarked at 100 in March 2012.
The MBA reported that all four of the component indices were down, with the Government MCAI taking the biggest hit, down 2.1%. The Conventional MCAI was down 0.8% as was one of its sub-indices, the Conforming index. The second component of the Conventional MCAI, the Jumbo index, was down 0.7%.
"Mortgage credit availability decreased in March, driven by both conventional and government loan programs,” said Joel Kan, MBA's associate vice president of research and economics, in a statement. “The government MCAI saw the largest decrease, which was driven by investors making adjustments to their interest rate reduction offerings for FHA and VA loans."
The MBA said the MCAI is calculated using several underwriting factors including credit score, loan type, and loan-to-value ratio. The four components are constructed in the same way as the composite index and are designed to show relative risk and credit availability for their respective borrower populations. The Conforming and Jumbo indices have the same index date and base as the MCAI, March 2012=100. The Conventional and Government indices have adjusted "base levels" to better represent where each index might fall in March 2012 relative to the 100 benchmark.