Official figures have confirmed that mortgage applications across US managed to decline during last week, mainly as demand for loans to purchase homes and refinance slipped.

The Mortgage Bankers Association's index fell by 2.1% in the week up-to February 12. The group's purchase gauge slipped by 4%, and the refinancing measure, on the other hand, dropped by 1.2%.

Experts feel that homebuyers could have been discouraged by blizzards which hit the East Coast and severe winter storms in the South, which happened last week.

"The market is going to be gradually recovering but it's not going to be a straight-line trajectory over the next two or three years or so", Derek Holt, an economist with Scotia Capital Inc. in Toronto, said.

The release of the data on weekly mortgage applications has come right before figures on housing data for the month of January are to be released. For December, the same had declined by 4%.