Mortgage Rate Watch
If You're One of Those People Asking How Much Lower Your Mortgage Rate Quote is After Fed Day, This is Required Reading Thu, 18 Sep 2025 19:40:00 GMT
It's day two of mortgage rates surging higher--now back to the highest levels in 2 weeks (the day before the September 5th jobs report). The juxtaposition of yesterday's Fed rate cut and the sudden mortgage rate spike is incredibly confusing to most of the population, so let's clear it up. SHORT VERSION:   The Fed Funds Rate (FFR) doesn't dictate mortgage rates The FFR only changes on Fed announcement days, 8 times a year.  It changes in response to various economic reports and events. Mortgage rates change daily and the bonds that drive mortgage rates change in real-time throughout the day.  That means mortgage rates can drop for all the same reasons that drove yesterday's rate cut. Because those reasons were already in play well before yesterday, mortgage rates had already responded to them well before yesterday. Bottom line: the Fed Funds Rate and mortgage rates dropped for the same reasons, but mortgage rates got to do it sooner because they move more nimbly.  LONG VERSION: We've written and re-written the long version too many times to count.  Here is one of the most evergreen examples: https://www.mortgagenewsdaily.com/markets/mortgage-rates-09212022 SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING OTHER NEWS STORIES SAYING RATES ARE LOWER: There are an unfortunate number of news articles out there today that claim mortgage rates are LOWER.  This is due to Freddie Mac's weekly rate survey dropping to 6.26 from 6.35 last week. Freddie's rate is an average of the 5 days ending yesterday, so 80% of the input is comprised of the lowest rates in a long time.  News organizations then quote the survey and give the impression that this week's rates are lower than last week's.
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Mortgage Rates HIGHER (Not Lower) After Fed Rate Cut Wed, 17 Sep 2025 19:53:00 GMT
Several things happen on Fed Day--especially on the 4 out of 8 examples with updated rate forecasts from Fed members.  The official announcement of a rate cut is typically the least important aspect.  In fact, it is usually entirely unimportant in terms of its impact on mortgage rates. Instead, the bonds that determine mortgage rates are much more likely to react to the Fed's dot plot (the chart showing each Fed member's rate forecast over the next few years) and the press conference with the Fed Chair. The dots are released at 2pm at the same time as the rate cut announcement.  The press conference follows at 2:30pm and usually lasts 50 minutes. This staggered timing makes for plenty of back and forth volatility on occasion and today was a prime example.  The dots helped bonds because they signaled better odds for two additional cuts in 2025 as opposed to only one.  The market was mostly expecting that, but it wasn't fully priced-in to prevailing rates.  Things changed during Powell's press conference and bonds ended up more than reversing the initial move. Powell framed today's cut as a "risk management" cut and emphasized that the forecasts in the dot plot do not represent a plan for future cuts. Rather, the Fed will continue to take things on a meeting by meeting basis and make decisions based on the new data that becomes available over that time. As the underlying bond market responded, most mortgage lenders issued mid-day changes to the rates announced this morning. The net effect is that mortgage rates are most certainly HIGHER this afternoon compared to yesterday's latest levels, not to mention this morning's. 
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Mortgage Rates Near 3 Year Lows Ahead of Fed Tue, 16 Sep 2025 19:18:00 GMT
Mortgage rates dropped sharply lower today relative to the amount of movement in the underlying bond market with the average lender right in line with the lowest levels since late 2022. Because rates are directly tied to the prices of those bonds, the correlation tends to be almost perfect over time. [thirtyyearmortgagerates] But there are always scattered examples of one leap-frogging the other. These inconsistencies can arise for several reasons. In today's case, it happened due to late-day strength in bonds yesterday afternoon coupled with the structure of the underlying mortgage bond market. An explanation of the latter would be woefully esoteric in the context of a daily mortgage rate update--even for industry professionals. In the simplest possible terms, it has to do with the range of interest rates allowed in each grouping of mortgage backed securities (MBS). As investor sentiment shifts in favor of the next lower grouping, it effectively greases the skids for rates to slide down into the range associated with that grouping. The overall set-up is reminiscent of September 2024 when rates were doing the same thing for the same reasons ahead of Fed meeting with a virtual 100% chance of a rate cut. Back then, mortgage rates moved paradoxically higher after the Fed rate cut.  The same thing could happen this time, but it's by no means guaranteed. In fact, last year's Fed rate cut wasn't the catalyst for rising mortgage rates. Instead, it was an upbeat shift in economic data in early October. In other words, rates will take their next major cues from incoming economic data over the next few weeks. 
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Mortgage Rates Start Week at Another Long-Term Low Mon, 15 Sep 2025 19:12:00 GMT
Mortgage rates have done almost nothing but move lower over the past 4 months. The first Fridays in August and September account for about half of the total drop thanks to weaker results in the jobs report. Since the September 5th jobs report, rates have held a sideways-to-slightly lower range that's resulted in several additional "lowest since" headlines. There's nothing special about today in that regard. Bonds (which dictate rates) happened to improve, so rates inched to another 11+ month low. Today's levels aren't appreciably different than last Friday's.  Volatility is a bigger risk over the next two days thanks to economic data tomorrow morning and the Fed announcement on Wednesday. 
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Mortgage Rates Were Flat All Week No Matter What Other News Suggests Fri, 12 Sep 2025 19:20:00 GMT
The underlying bond market (which dictates the rates offered by mortgage lenders) weakened moderately overnight.  Weaker bonds equate to higher rates, all else equal.   "Higher rates" is contrary to many media outlets' coverage this week, but there's an important reason. Most news organizations that cover mortgage rates rely on Freddie Mac's weekly rate survey for their once-a-week update. Additionally, when Freddie's rate raises/falls appreciably, it receives even more attention. This frequently creates problems due to the timing and methodology of Freddie's survey. Specifically, the survey is an AVERAGE of the rates seen over the 5 days (Thu-Wed) leading up to Freddie's Thursday release. As such, if rates happen to fall sharply on a Friday (as was the case last week), our DAILY rate tracking will reflect that on Friday while Freddie won't catch up until the following Thursday (yesterday, in this case). By that time, rates hadn't moved any lower, and now today, they're actually a bit higher. All that to say, the rate drop you're hearing about from Freddie is the same rate drop we told you about last Friday.  There's been no meaningful improvement since then, and in fact, a modest increase in rates today. Today's move in bonds/rates wasn't driven by anything specific  and shifts of this size don't demand concrete justification in underlying data or events. It could simply be the case that traders were closing out trading positions for the week and the modest uptick in yields/rates was the incidental result. 
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Mortgage Rates Move Back to Long-Term Lows Thu, 11 Sep 2025 19:51:00 GMT
Today's inflation report (the Consumer Price Index or CPI) certainly had a chance to create volatility for rates, but things ended up staying fairly calm.  There are multiple subheadings of data that the bond market cares about when it come to CPI. Most of them were in line with expectations, or close enough to avoid surprising investors. The absence of surprise gave way to some improvement in bonds which, in turn, allowed mortgage lenders to start the day at just slightly lower levels.  Additionally, a higher reading in this morning's weekly jobless claims report may have helped. Officially, the top tier 30yr fixed rate at the average lender just barely scratched out a new 11-month low, but most borrowers would see little--if any--difference compared to the past 4 days.
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Mortgage Rates Hold Steady With Help From Econ Data Wed, 10 Sep 2025 20:02:00 GMT
Wednesday brought the first of this week's two key inflation reports. While the Producer Price Index (PPI) is the lesser of the two in terms of potential impact on rates, it came in far enough below expectations to make for a measurable improvement. The catch is that the improvement in question pertains to the underlying bond market. Before the data, bonds were slightly weaker, thus suggesting slightly higher rates.  But lenders don't release their rates for the day until a few hours of trading have commenced.  This leaves time for markets to react to early AM data such as today's PPI. Bottom line, PPI helped bonds which, in turn, helped rates hold steady as opposed to drift a bit higher. 
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Mortgage Rates Finally Tick Slightly Higher Tue, 09 Sep 2025 19:19:00 GMT
It had to happen at some point. After spending 4 straight days of setting new 11-month lows, mortgage rates finally moved higher today, but the headline is much scarier than reality. In fact, many borrowers won't see any detectable difference from yesterday's latest levels as the average lender's top tier 30yr fixed rates moved a mere 0.01% higher. This preserves the entirety of the improvement seen last Friday when rates dropped sharply in response to the downbeat jobs report.  There haven't been major economic reports so far this week (the bonds that underly mortgage rate movement tend to react when important economic reports come in much higher or lower than expected). That changes over the next 2 days. Both Wednesday and Thursday bring important inflation updates via the producer and consumer price indices, respectively. Of the two, Thursday's Consumer Price Index (CPI) is the bigger potential source of volatility. Taken together, they will help flesh out the inflation considerations that will help the Fed hone in on a pace for the rate cuts that are expected to start in 2 weeks. [thirtyyearmortgagerates]
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Another 11-Month Low For Rates, But Just Barely Mon, 08 Sep 2025 19:34:00 GMT
To their credit, most mortgage lenders did an admirable job of aggressively pricing-in the bond market rally after last Friday's jobs report. Many mortgage market pros repeat the phrase "stairs down, escalator up" when it comes to the pace at which lenders change rates. The idea is that lenders are quicker to raise rates than cut them, but this clearly wasn't the case this time. Because of that healthy level of aggression, there wasn't as much room for improvement at the start of the new week compared to other Mondays that follow weak jobs report numbers. Case in point, after the August 1st jobs report, the following Monday accounted for more than a quarter of the 2-day drop in rates.  Compare that to today which only accounted for about 5% of the 2-day drop. But gains are gains, and the small improvement brings the average top tier 30yr fixed rate to another 11-month low. [thirtyyearmortgagerates]
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Mortgage Rates Plummet Back to Fall 2024 Levels Fri, 05 Sep 2025 15:51:00 GMT
It's a well-known fact that the monthly jobs report is more capable of causing big reactions in rates than any other economic data. It happened last month in grand fashion, and it is happening again this morning.  Nonfarm Payrolls (NFP), which is a count of new jobs created, came in at a mere 22k for August versus a median forecast of 75k. This is actually not the biggest miss when it comes to NFP, but it's big enough to spark a reaction in the bond market. In general, weaker jobs numbers prompt investors to buy bonds. When investors buy bonds, the price of those bonds goes up. When bond prices go up, rates go down. Today's net effect is an average top tier 30yr fixed rate drop from 6.45% yesterday to 6.29% today. This is back in the same range as the low rates in the Fall of 2024. [thirtyyearmortgagerates]
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