The Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA's) Mortgage
Credit Availability Index (MCAI), a measure of access to mortgage credit, partially
rebounded from an unusually large downturn in December. The Index rose 2.3 percent in January to
179.0. A lower MCAI indicates that lending standards are tightening while
increases means credit is loosening. The
MCAI fell 7.3 percent the prior month, driven by a 14.5 percent decline in the
Conventional MCAI.

The Conventional MCAI increased 4.9 percent while
the Government MCAI was unchanged. Of the component indices of the Conventional
MCAI, the Conforming MCAI increased by 7.3 percent, and the Jumbo MCAI
increased by 3.0 percent.
"There was an increase in the supply of mortgage credit
in January, which was a reversal from the December pullback that was caused by
the end of the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) and a reduction in
jumbo offerings," said Joel Kan, MBA's Associate Vice President of Economic and
Industry Forecasting. "Last month, investors and lenders added more programs to
cater to lower credit score borrowers, in addition to new relief refinance
programs. These relief refinance programs are not a direct replacement for HARP
but do serve a similar purpose to assist borrowers who may have run into
financial challenges."
The MCAI is calculated using several factors related to borrower
eligibility (credit score, loan type, loan-to-value ratio, etc.) gathered from
over 95 lenders and investors. They are combined with data from an AllRegs
proprietary product to calculate a summary measure indicating the availability
of mortgage credit at a point in time
The MCAI and its components are designed to show
relative credit risk/availability for their respective indices and were
benchmarked in March 2012. The total MCAI, Conforming, and Jumbo indices were
indexed at 100 while the Conventional and Government indices were indexed at
73.5 and 183.5 respectively to better represent where each index might have
been relative to 100.