The average interest rate on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage declined five basis points to 3.93% for the week ended June 20, according to the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey. However, that decline, the first in several weeks, is likely to be temporary as rates spiked following Ben Bernanke’s comments about the Federal Reserve ending its bond buying program.
One year ago the 30-year FRM average 3.66%. The Zillow Mortgage Market Rate Ticker for
While the Freddie survey covers the period before the Bernanke comments, it came out the morning after they were made. Freddie chief economist Frank Nothaft said “The Fed stated that economic growth has been expanding at a moderate pace and that labor market conditions have shown further improvement, although the unemployment rate remains elevated. It noted inflation has been running below the Fed's longer-run objective as well. As a result, the Fed will continue its bond-buying program at the current pace and maintain its highly accommodative monetary policy stance.
"The Fed also affirmed that the housing sector has strengthened further. For instance, single-family housing permits increased nearly two percentage points in May to an annualized pace of 649,000 homes, the most since May 2008. In addition, homebuilder confidence in June rose to its highest reading since March 2006."
According to the PMMS, the 15-year FRM average rate declined by six basis points to 3.04%, the five-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage held steady at 2.79% and the one-year Treasury-indexed ARM was down one basis point to 2.57%.
