Mortgage applications in America posted their strongest gain last week in more than two months, as both home purchases and refinancing rose.

The Mortgage Bankers Association’s weekly application index rose 7.2% to 612.8 from 571.7 the week ending March 31. The Washington-based group’s purchase gauge rose 8.4% to 438.2 from 404.1.

Mortgage rates remain within about a percentage point of a fourdecade low, which may ensure a soft landing for the housing market after five years of record sales. Still, slowing price appreciation and rising rates will limit the refinancing that’s helped fuel consumer spending, economists say.

“Buyers may be eager to lock in rates now as mortgage rates are expected to trend higher,” Chris Rupkey, a senior financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ in New York, said before the report. “Many homes go on the market in the first days of spring, and this is the first real evidence that buyers are taking a fresh look at the market.”

New and existing home sales together may fall 6% this year after five consecutive annual records, as rising mortgage rates put home purchases out of reach for more Americans, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Purchase applications are down 18% since reaching a high in June of last year, the mortgage bankers group said.

The Federal Reserve has raised its benchmark lending rate 15 consecutive times, totaling 3.75 percentage points, since June 2004, helping push fixedrate 30-year mortgages up more than 1 percentage point. Shorter-term rates have risen more.

The mortgage bankers group’s gauge of refinancing rose 5.3% to 1640.8 from 1558.4. The index is down 45% from a 12-month high reached in June.

The average rate on a fixed 30-year mortgage rose to 6.49% from 6.36%, the bankers’ group said. Borrowing costs for every $100,000 of a loan would be $631.41 a month, based on last week’s contract rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage, compared with $593.78 a year ago when the average rate was 5.91%.

Home affordability, a measure of how large a mortgage a family with a median income can qualify for, ended 2005 at the lowest since 1991.

As the housing market cools and borrowing against home equity slows, consumer-spending growth from April through June will decline to 2.9% from an estimated pace of 4.7% this quarter, according to the median estimate in a recent Bloomberg News survey of 74 economists.

Lennar Corporation, the thirdlargest American homebuilder by stock market value, said on March 28 that its new orders increased 3.5%, the smallest gain since the third quarter of 2004, in the fiscal first quarter. It said its earnings jumped 34% on contracts signed before the market cooled.

“Market conditions are generally favorable for a fairly soft correction in the homebuilding world,” said Lennar Chief Executive Officer Stuart Miller on a March 28 conference call.

“Interest rates are still low by all historical measures, unemployment is low, job formation remains strong in most markets, and the economy is reasonably strong.”

The average 15-year rate rose to 6.15% from 6.0% the week before, yesterday’s report showed. The rate on a one-year adjustable mortgage rose to 5.96% from 5.83%.