For consumers looking to buy a home or refinance, mortgage rates couldn’t be better.
With the exception of the pending U.S. deficit crisis – which is obviously a big issue – there is little on the horizon to suggest that residential loan rates will begin to rise any time soon.
As National Mortgage News went to press the yield on the benchmark 10-year had fallen slightly to 2.93%, an indication that financial markets still believe that the White House and Republicans will somehow strike a compromise on raising the federal debt ceiling.
Meanwhile, Freddie Mac’s weekly survey shows that vanilla fixed rate loans are proving the most enticing to consumers. For the week ending July 14, 30-year FRMs were being offered at 4.51% with an average of 0.7 of a point, down 9 basis points from the previous week.
Similarly, the average 15-year FRM was down 10 basis points at 3.65% with an average of 0.6 of a point.
Five-year Treasury-indexed hybrid and one-year Treasury ARMs – which are much less popular in the current market -- saw lesser declines in the most recent week. Consumers who took out one-year Treasury ARMs continued to get a slight break on average points compared to other loans.
Freddie Mac chief economist Frank Nothaft in his weekly report attributed the rate declines to, among other things, monthly job figures that were well below market expectations.
