Mortgage Rates Casually Drift Back to 2 Month Lows

It was a fairly decent day for mortgage rates with the average lender returning to the lowest levels in just over 2 months. The improvement followed early morning comments from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent regarding the probable mix of future Treasury debt. What's that got to do with mortgage rates?  So much...  Mortgage rates are based on mortgage-specific bonds that are in the same extended family as US Treasuries.  If Treasuries are like oranges, mortgages are like orange juice--i.e. they're sort of a substitute for some people, but either way, heavily dependent on the price and availability of the former. All that to say that anything that impacts Treasuries in an obvious way also tends to impact mortgage rates.   Today's impacts were minimal, but mortgage rates weren't too far from those 2 month lows to begin with. Bigger victories would require a decisive shift toward lower inflation in key economic reports, or toward a markedly weaker economic data in general.

Mortgage Rates Unchanged After Mid-Day Changes

It was almost a mildly interesting day as rates started out slightly higher.  To be fair, even that would not have been too interesting because the move was so small that most rate quotes would have been unaffected.  Still, just to be sure to avoid any and all excitement, rates received a minor, friendly bump back to yesterday's levels in the afternoon.  The improvement followed the bond market's favorable reaction to the release of the minutes from the most recent Fed meeting.   Mortgage lenders tend to avoid making mid-day changes to rates unless the underlying bond market moves by a certain amount. Because today's intraday bond market movement was on the small side, only a handful of lenders changed their rates, but it was enough for the average 30yr fixed rate to drop 0.01%--the smallest increment we measure.

Mortgage Rates Bounce Back Up

Mortgage lenders were unable to update their rates yesterday as the bond market was closed for the Presidents Day holiday.  Three day weekends can occasionally result in extra volatility on the first day of the new week because--in many cases--the rest of the world's financial markets continue moving. This leaves the US bond market (which is responsible for dictating interest rates) with the need to cover 2 days worth of ground.  In today's case, that ground led toward higher rates both yesterday and today. The net effect was a return to the rates just a hair below those seen last Thursday, thus erasing most of Friday's gains.  The silver lining is that Thursday's rates were already near the lowest in just under 2 months.

Renting is Still More Affordable than Buying in All but Two Major U.S. Metros