Well, the mortgage business got a small dose of good news this week, but its only one week so don’t get too excited.

I didn’t mean to glom both charts from [Calculated Risk](http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2006/01/mba-purchase-index.html) (who has the best looking charts on the web) for this post but they were so good I just had to.

[Refi mortgage applications were up [MBA]](http://www.mortgagebankers.org/news/2006/wk0118.asp) over last week. Here’s a few other interesting stats (covers 50% of all US retail mortgage originations):

* Refi’s to Purchase Mortgage 44%, up from 42% last week

* 1 Yr ARM average rate was 5.39% down from 5.42% last week

* 30 Yr Fixed was 6.07% down from 6.08% last week

What was also really interesting was yet another chart by [Calculated Risk](http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2006/01/mba-purchase-index.html) who tracked the purchase mortgage index for the past 9 years on the third week of January. The results showed the purchase mortgage volume remains at high levels on an historical basis.