Freddie Mac: Mortgage rates higher amid crisis; 30-year at 4.28%
Fixed mortgage rates rose early this week amid the debt crisis, Freddie Mac’s latest survey showed, with lenders offering the 30-year home loan at an average of 4.28%, up from 4.23% a week earlier.
The offering rate for 15-year fixed mortgages averaged 3.33%, according to the survey, up from 3.31% last week.
The survey was conducted Monday through Wednesday morning, a period when it was uncertain if Congress would lift the maximum amount of debt the government can shoulder.
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The agreement to temporarily resolve the crisis, reached late Wednesday, caused the yield on the 10-year Treasury note, a proxy for home lending rates, to decline slightly this morning.
“This should show up in lower mortgage rates over the next week, if sustained,” Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, said in an email to The Times.
Freddie Mac’s survey, conducted since 1971, asks lenders each week to describe the terms they are offering to borrowers with solid credit who have down payments or home equity of at least 20%.
The borrowers would have paid the lenders an average of 0.7% of the loan amount in fees and discount points to obtain the rates, Freddie Mac said.
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