Fixed mortgage rates were unchanged this past week, though they could be elevated in the next report. Interest rates on hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages did rise.
Interest rates on 30-year loans that are used to finance a home purchase
and do not exceed the conforming loan amount of $424,100 averaged 4.19 percent in August.
That is based on a small survey of lenders by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which indicated that average rates ascended 5 basis points from the previous month.
Mortgage rates have escalated even more compared to August of last year, when the average was previously reported by FHFA at 3.74 percent.
Freddie Mac, which is regulated by FHFA, reported in its Primary Mortgage Market Survey that 30-year fixed rates averaged 3.83 percent in the week ended Sept. 28, 2017.
There was no change from the preceding seven-day period. But long-term mortgage rates were worse than 3.42 percent the same week in 2016.
Joe Farr, who is the director of sales and marketing at MBSQuoteline, reported that prices for mortgage-backed securities have worsened since primary lenders were surveyed this week. Interest rates rise when MBS prices are down.
“This week’s Freddie Mac survey missed the drop in MBS prices that occurred on Wednesday as the framework of President Trump’s pro-growth tax reform proposal was released,” Farr stated. “Mortgage rates are actually higher as of Thursday.”
Fixed rates are likely to be roughly 5 BPS worse in
Freddie’s next survey, according to an analysis of Treasury market data by Mortgage Daily.
But a plurality of panelists surveyed by Bankrate.com for the week Sept. 27 to Oct. 4 predicted rates will move down at least 3 BPS. Only a third expected an increase, and just a quarter projected a no change.
In the U.S. Mortgage Market Index report from Mortgage Daily and OpenClose for the week ended Sept. 22,
jumbo rates were 11 BPS higher than conforming rates. Jumbo rates were 10 BPS higher than conforming rates a week earlier.
At 3.13 percent in Freddie’s survey, 15-year fixed rates were also the same as in the week ended Sept. 21, 2017. That left the spread between 15- and 30-year rates at 70 BPS.
Freddie reported five-year, Treasury-indexed, hybrid ARMs at 3.20 percent, a 3-basis-point increase from the previous report.
Treasury Department data indicate that the yield on the one-year Treasury note was unchanged from a week earlier at 1.31 percent Thursday.
Like with the one-year Treasury, the six-month London Interbank Offered Rate is utilized to determine rate changes on some ARMs. LIBOR, which is being eliminated by the British Financial Conduct Authority in 2021,
climbed to 1.50 percent as of Wednesday from 1.48 percent seven days earlier, Bankrate.com reported.
ARM share thinned to 12.0 percent in the most-recent Mortgage Market Index report from 14.6 percent in the prior report.
