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Mortgage Rates Modestly Higher on Thursday. Friday’s Risks Are Bigger Mortgage rates were just a hair higher for the average lender on Thursday. The underlying bond market lost some ground following a stronger weekly Jobless Claims report and in sympathy with global bond market weakness overnight.  Because rates are based on bonds, when bonds are […]

Wednesday had the potential to cause bigger volatility for rates due to the confluence of several important economic reports. If that data had been lopsided in one direction or the other, rates likely would have moved more. As it happened, the data was mixed. The net effect was an exceedingly modest drop in the average

Mortgage rates have been effectively unchanged for 5 straight days now. During that time, the MND 30yr fixed rate index hasn’t moved by more than 0.01%. The average borrower would see almost exactly the same terms on any of these days. The absence of volatility isn’t much of a surprise given the time of year

Heading into the week, we knew there was a high bar for any legitimate mortgage rate fireworks. In addition to a dearth of scheduled events with the power to cause volatility, the last two weeks of the year don’t tend to see big changes in the bond market.  There are exceptions, but 2025 wasn’t one

Although Freddie Mac’s weekly mortgage rate survey (released today) suggested the lowest rates since October 2024, our daily numbers offer a bit more nuance. To be sure, October 28th and September 16th both saw distinctly lower rates this year.   Today’s rates are right in line with yesterday’s as well as last Friday’s.  In other words,

Mortgage rates continue operating in an excruciatingly narrow range near their lowest levels of the past few years. Yesterday was the 6th best day of 2025. Today is tied for 7th place after rates moved 0.01% higher on average. While the underlying bond market is fully open today, it’s a slow time of year in

With another holiday closure on deck and light calendar of events, the rate market is off to another uneventful start this week. In fact, the average lender barely budged from last Friday. But it was enough for MND’s 30yr fixed rate index to tick down by 0.01%. This is the lowest level since October 28th–just

Because mortgage rates are determined by the bond market, a boring market day typically translates to a boring mortgage rate day. But that’s not entirely true today. While the level of movement is indeed very small, it only took a small movement to get the average 30yr fixed rate down to their lowest levels since

It was a short day for the bond market that underlies mortgage rates, but a good one. A side effect of holiday weeks and early market closures is a bit of random volatility without any obvious justification. When volume and participation are low, bonds can move a bit more than they otherwise might. All that