Mortgage Rate Watch
Mortgage Rates Started Higher, But Ended Lower Tue, 18 Mar 2025 19:07:00 GMT
As we often discuss, mortgage lenders prefer to set their rates once per day. They only make changes when the underlying bond market makes a big enough move. While it wasn't an extreme example, many lenders made such changes today as bonds improved steadily throughout the day.  Before the improvements, the average lender was offering slightly higher rates compared to yesterday. After the improvement, today's rates are a hair lower than yesterday's. In both cases, rates continue holding inside a narrow range just off the best levels since mid October. There were several economic reports this morning, but they didn't have a material impact on rates.  Tomorrow's key event is the Fed announcement and press conference.  This announcement is one of only 4 per year where the Fed will update its rate projections--something that often causes volatility across the rate spectrum. Those projections come out at 2pm ET and Fed Chair Powell holds the customary press conference 30 minutes later. We're not expecting any specific outcome in terms of the direction of movement in mortgage rates and in general, this Fed announcement is a bit less consequential than many recent examples. Nonetheless, potential volatility is always factor on Fed days, even if the volatility doesn't materialize. 
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Mortgage Rates Hold Steady Over The Weekend Mon, 17 Mar 2025 19:50:00 GMT
Mortgage rates are based on movement in the bond market, and the bond market is closed for most of the weekend.  As such, one might assume that Monday's mortgage rates would always be right in line with Friday's.  But this is definitely not the case for two reasons: 1. The bond market may not officially open in the U.S. until 8:20am ET, but U.S. bonds begin to trade late Sunday night.   2. Mortgage lenders don't set their rates for the day right when bonds start trading.  The average lender waits until around 10-11am ET. Because of this, there can be quite a bit of movement in bonds before lenders set rates for the day.  The only time we'd see Monday's rates hold perfectly in line with Friday's are occasions like today where the bond market was in similar territory to Friday's levels in the 10-11am ET hour this morning. The sideways drift means mortgage rates continue operating in a narrow range near the lowest levels since mid-October.
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Mortgage Rates Hold Very Steady, Yet Again Fri, 14 Mar 2025 19:38:00 GMT
Despite some ups and downs on a small scale, mortgage rates have been sideways in the bigger picture.  That's a good thing if the latest refi application data is any indication.  Demand is at the highest levels since October as rates have generally been holding near mid-October levels. Today was just another day in that regard.  Bonds (which dictate rates) were slightly weaker overnight (bond weakness implies higher rates). As as often been the case recently, stocks played a role in the rate movement. Prospects for a debt ceiling deal may have contributed to market optimism.  With that, mortgage rates were just a few tenths of a percent higher than yesterday, but to reiterate, not too far from yesterday's latest levels.
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Mortgage Rates Recover After Starting Slightly Higher Thu, 13 Mar 2025 19:38:00 GMT
Mortgage rates hit their highest levels in just over 2 weeks yesterday and they were on track to remain unchanged today. In fact, the average lender offered the exact same 30yr fixed rate when this morning's initial barrage of rate sheets came out. Lenders typically publish their first rates of the day around 10am ET, and they prefer to avoid any do-overs. But because rates are based on bonds, when the underlying bond market moves enough, lenders can opt to update their offerings. In the mortgage industry, these instances are referred to as "reprices."  Reprices can happen in either direction.  Today's were positive (i.e. lower rates). This was made possible by bond market improvement that came at the expense of stock market weakness.  Stocks and bonds don't always have this type of push and pull relationship, but it has been more common in recent weeks as stocks swoon. Despite the improvement, the general trend in rates has been sideways to slightly higher, but inside the lowest, narrowest range since October.  
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Highest Mortgage Rates in Just Over 2 Weeks Wed, 12 Mar 2025 19:18:00 GMT
Mortgage rates have moved up over the past 2 days, ultimately hitting the highest levels since February 24th today.  While that sounds somewhat unpleasant or unfortunate, context paints a softer picture.  Specifically, since February 25th, the average top tier 30yr fixed rate has been in a fairly narrow 0.12% range centered on 6.75%. That makes the past 2 weeks the best 2 weeks we've seen since early October. Today's contribution ended up being surprisingly uneventful. Why surprising? Markets were eagerly anticipating the Consumer Price Index (CPI) release this morning. As is always the case these days, CPI stands a good chance to send rates higher or lower at a faster pace than most other economic reports. Today's CPI showed softer than expected inflation for February and an upward revision for January. Some of the underlying components suggested future inflation readings would be slightly higher than expected. Those counterpoints prevented rates from moving lower despite the apparent victory in the headlines. Looking ahead, tomorrow's Producer Price Index (PPI) is a similar report, but focused on wholesale inflation as opposed to consumer inflation.  It, too, can have a bearing on the same future inflation data as CPI. Last month, PPI actually had a bigger impact, and it helped push rates back down after CPI pushed them higher. While this certainly doesn't mean history will repeat itself, it illustrates the possibility of disagreement among these reports. 
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Mortgage Rates Slightly Higher Ahead of Important Inflation Data Tue, 11 Mar 2025 19:15:00 GMT
With fiscal and geopolitical developments dominating the news cycle, it would be easy to forget that interest rates prefer to take their primary cues from economic data.  This is an important reminder considering tomorrow morning brings one of the most closely watched economic reports: the Consumer Price Index (CPI). CPI is one of only a few inflation reports from the U.S. government. It is also the out 2 weeks earlier than its only real competitor. Because of that, and the fact that rates are greatly impact by inflation, CPI is one of the biggest potential sources of rate volatility. There are certainly other economic reports that matter.  Even today's Job Openings data managed to cause small scale volatility this morning, but CPI is  far more capable.  As always, in order to have a truly big impact on rates, the data would need to come in much higher or lower than forecast, and there's no way to know where it will come in ahead of time (economists have already done their best to forecast that).  As for today, stock market fluctuations proved to be a bigger influence than the Job Openings data, ultimately pushing rates slightly higher compared to yesterday's latest levels.
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Mortgage Rates Recover Some of Last Week's Losses Mon, 10 Mar 2025 19:02:00 GMT
Conventional 30yr fixed mortgage rates hit their lowest levels in months last Tuesday morning, with the average lender right in line with levels from mid October or early December. After that, rates rose steadily for the next two days and leveled off on Friday. While the bounce was small enough to leave a vast majority of 2025's improvement intact, it nonetheless raised the risk that the bond market would need more convincing before rates were willing to keep following the broader sentiment suggested by ongoing stock losses. Specifically, stocks are speaking to economic concerns. When stocks drop quickly enough, investors can seek safer havens, such as bonds.  When demand for bonds increases, rates fall, all other things being equal. Monday has been reassuring in that regard. Bonds are once again paying attention to weakness in stocks--it just happened to take a bigger drop in stocks that we saw last week. Despite the improvement in rates, we would still expect some resistance to the idea of rapid improvement unless the economic data begins to sound the same warnings as equities markets. On that note, the most relevant econ data on the near-term horizon is Wednesday's Consumer Price Index (CPI), the first of the broad measures of inflation in the U.S. and one of the biggest potential sources of volatility for rates.
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Mortgage Rates Back Near Yesterday's Levels After Starting Out Lower Fri, 07 Mar 2025 19:47:00 GMT
The average mortgage lender was briefly able to offer noticeably lower rates this morning compared to yesterday's latest levels. Credit goes to this morning's jobs report for coming in a bit weaker than expected. What do jobs have to do with rates? Rates are based on bonds and bonds are heavily influenced by the state of the economy. Today's jobs report is traditionally the single most important economic report as far as bonds are concerned. In general, weaker economic data begets stronger bonds and lower rates. The fact that rates didn't make a huge move in the morning was our first clue that the jobs report was open to interpretation--or at least open to being superseded by the day's other developments.  That became obvious in the PM hours as stocks surged and bonds weakened.  When bonds lose enough ground on any given day, mortgage lenders will "reprice" to higher rates, as has been the case today.  After the reprice, the average lender is roughly where they were yesterday--still not a bad outcome in the bigger picture, even if not as good as the morning hours suggested. [thirtyyearmortgagerates]
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Mortgage Rates Higher For 3rd Straight Day Thu, 06 Mar 2025 20:18:00 GMT
You may see conflicting news about mortgage rates today, depending on where you look. Weekly surveys, such as Freddie Mac's, are showing a fairly big drop from last week. That was indeed the case over the 5 business days of the weekly survey, but that data is now quite stale.   More timely rate metrics show the average lender raising rates over the past 3 days. This is no surprise considering bond yields are higher over the same time frame (mortgage rates almost always move the same direction as bonds yields, specifically 5yr and 10yr Treasuries).  Rates have moved higher even as stocks continue lower--a good reminder for anyone who was counting on ongoing stock losses to keep fueling the rate rally. As we often discuss, The correlation between stocks and bonds/rates can come and go for a variety of reasons, but economic data almost always matters when it comes to rates.  With several recent reports painting a less dire economic picture, rates have taken the opportunity to pause the exuberant decline that started 3 weeks ago in earnest, but they're still much lower than they have been for most of the year with the exception of the past several days. [thirtyyearmortgagerates] Tomorrow's jobs report is the most important economic data of the week in terms of potential rate volatility.
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Mortgage Rates Move Slightly Higher Wed, 05 Mar 2025 20:12:00 GMT
It's been a great couple of weeks for mortgage rates, largely mirroring the terrible couple of weeks for the stock market. A combination of downbeat econ data and economic concerns helped push investors away from stocks and into bonds (mortgage rates are based on bonds where more demand means lower rates). There have been two notable attempts on the part of stocks to bounce back over these two weeks and today was one of them. Rates have been under pressure at the same time, but they're not just thinking about stocks.   Rates/bonds prefer to take cues from economic data.  While today's was mixed, the more meaningful of the two key reports was not rate-friendly.  Mortgage lenders began the day in decent shape but many were forced to adjust rates higher as bonds responded to the econ data. Fortunately, the damage is minimal for now, and the average 30yr fixed rate is still right in line with the best levels in 4 months, generally speaking. There will be more data with the power to send rates in either direction over the next 2 days.  As always, there's no way to know ahead of time if the data will help or hurt. 
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