There were fewer jobless claims during the week ending February 11, which could result in brokers and lenders seeing more purchase activity in the future.

A report from the Department of Labor found that there were recently 348,000 jobless claims, which is a 3.6 percent decrease from the previous week. The report noted that this is the lowest number seen in nearly four years.

The report indicated that despite the improvement, there were 7.68 million Americans still receiving some form of federal unemployment benefits during the week ending February 4, which is slightly more than the previous week.

However, the finding was surprising to a number of industry analysts, as a recent survey conducted by Econoday anticipated there to be 365,000 jobless claims after a range of estimates between 355,000 and 370,000.

In addition to a drop in the number of jobless claims, a previous report form the Labor Department found that the economy added 243,000 new jobs in January, pushing the unemployment rate down to 8.3 percent.