Mortgage Rates Were Flat All Week No Matter What Other News Suggests

The underlying bond market (which dictates the rates offered by mortgage lenders) weakened moderately overnight.  Weaker bonds equate to higher rates, all else equal.   "Higher rates" is contrary to many media outlets' coverage this week, but there's an important reason. Most news organizations that cover mortgage rates rely on Freddie Mac's weekly rate survey for their once-a-week update. Additionally, when Freddie's rate raises/falls appreciably, it receives even more attention. This frequently creates problems due to the timing and methodology of Freddie's survey. Specifically, the survey is an AVERAGE of the rates seen over the 5 days (Thu-Wed) leading up to Freddie's Thursday release. As such, if rates happen to fall sharply on a Friday (as was the case last week), our DAILY rate tracking will reflect that on Friday while Freddie won't catch up until the following Thursday (yesterday, in this case). By that time, rates hadn't moved any lower, and now today, they're actually a bit higher. All that to say, the rate drop you're hearing about from Freddie is the same rate drop we told you about last Friday.  There's been no meaningful improvement since then, and in fact, a modest increase in rates today. Today's move in bonds/rates wasn't driven by anything specific  and shifts of this size don't demand concrete justification in underlying data or events. It could simply be the case that traders were closing out trading positions for the week and the modest uptick in yields/rates was the incidental result.