Mortgage Rates Approaching 5-Month Lows

[Joseph Scorese]

Mortgage Rates Approaching 5-Month Lows

Mortgage rates had another great day, with most lenders maintaining or improving upon yesterday's 4-month lows. Given that we'd have to go back to May 8th, 2015 to see better rates, we're very close to '5-month lows.' In terms of top tier conventional 30yr fixed rate quotes, 3.875% remains most prevalent. A growing number of lenders are quoting 3.75% and only a few remain up at 4.0%. Not all borrowers will see a change in their quoted rate over the past few days, but in those cases, the closing costs would be lower or the lender credit would be higher.

Although there was a reasonable chance that we'd see increased volatility in the markets that underlie mortgage rates today, trading remained calm and positive. Stock prices and bond yields continued to diverge. This could have something to do with the way investors approached the end of the month and quarter. In other words, the volatility that was a risk today, could instead simply be waiting for the new month/quarter tomorrow. In any event, Friday's big jobs report always has the potential to send rates quickly in either direction. While that does mean there could be further improvement for those willing to roll the dice on the economic data, it's hard to argue against taking that risk off the table with rates near 5-month lows.