REAL ESTATE

Mortgage Rates Drop: Mortgage rates declined this week for the first time in two months as 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages averaged 8.26%, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. said. The rate was down from last week’s 8.47%, the highest in nearly two years. This week’s rate is still about 1.5 percentage points above the 25-year low of 6.74% seen in October. The last time rates dropped was the week of Feb. 17, when the 30-year rate slipped from 7.21% the week before to 7.11%. On one-year, adjustable-rate mortgages, lenders were asking an average initial rate of 4.96% this week, unchanged from last week. Fifteen-year mortgages, a popular option for those refinancing mortgages, averaged 7.72% this week, down from 7.91% a week earlier.