Applications for U.S. mortgage tumbled for the fourth consecutive week as mortgage rates soared and causing applications to fall to its lowest level in nearly seven months, an industry group said Wednesday.

The Mortgage Bankers Association said in a statement its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage applications slid 15.8 percent to 514.4 for the week ended June 12. This is lowest since the week ended November 21, 2008.

The decline was led by the MBA's seasonally adjusted index of refinancing applications which fell 23.3 percent to 1,998.1 in the week, the MBA said. The drop put the index at the lowest level since the week ended November 21, 2008.

The MBA's seasonally adjusted purchase index, a gauge of loan requests for home purchases, fell 3.5 percent to 261.2, the MBA said.

The drop in applications was seen as an effect of soaring mortgage rates in recent weeks which dampened demand, particularly for home loan refinancing but was reversed in the previous week.

Mortgage rates for 30-year fixed-rate loans, excluding fees, averaged 5.50 percent, down 0.07 percentage point from the previous week, but is still much higher than the all-time low of 4.61 percent set in the week ended March 27.

Interest rates, however, were well below year-ago levels of 6.57 percent. The drop in demand for home loans may help measure how the hard-hit U.S. housing market is coping with the over-all economy.

The thirty-year mortgage rates had mostly been on a downward trend since the Fed unveiled its plan to buy mortgage-backed debt in late November.

The fixed 15-year mortgage rates averaged 4.99 percent, down from 5.10 percent the previous week. Rates on one-year ARMs decreased to 6.54 percent from 6.75 percent the prior week.

The share of refinance applications fell to 54.1 percent from 59.4 percent in the previous week.

The share of adjustable-rate mortgage activity rose to 4.3 percent in the latest week, up from 3.4 percent the previous week.