For the second week in a row, interest rates on residential loans didn’t change much. It’s possible that the trend could extend to three weeks.
Thirty-year fixed rates were reported at 4.17 percent in Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey for the week that ended on Feb. 9.
Long-term interest rates on home loans improved by 2 basis points compared to the prior survey — when mortgage rates also moved little.
“Rates are at about the same level at which they started the year and have stayed within a two basis point range over the past three weeks,” Freddie Mac Chief Economist Sean Becketti stated in the report. “Mixed economic releases such as Friday’s jobs report and uncertainty about the administration’s fiscal policies have contributed to the holding pattern in rates.”
But 30-year rates have soared well beyond 3.65 percent a year prior.
Mortgage-backed securities prices are very similar to when Freddie was conducting its survey, according to MBSQuoteline Director Joe Farr, with interest rates on home loans remaining close to surveyed levels.
For the moment, mortgage rates have settled in for the next week
and aren’t likely to be much different in Freddie’s next survey based on a Mortgage Daily analysis of Treasury market activity.
Forty-four percent of panelists surveyed by Bankrate.com for the week Feb. 9 to Feb. 15 agreed with Mortgage Daily’s forecast and predicted rates won’t move more than 2 BPS over the next week. Another 44 percent expected a decline in rates, and just 12 percent forecasted an increase.
In the U.S. Mortgage Market Index report from OpenClose and Mortgage Daily for the week ended Feb. 3, interest rates on jumbo mortgages were 8 BPS lower than conforming rates, the same spread as in the previous week.
Freddie’s survey had 15-year fixed rates averaging 3.39 percent, 2 BPS better than in the week ended Feb. 2, 2017. There was no change from last week’s report in the 78-basis-point spread between 15- and 30-year rates.
Hybrid five-year adjustable rate mortgages that use the one-year Treasury yield as the index averaged 3.21 percent in Freddie’s latest report, also 2 BPS lower than in the last survey.
The one-year Treasury note yield was 0.80 percent as of Thursday, the Treasury Department reported, down 4 BPS from seven days earlier.
An ARM index that is utilized far less than the one-year Treasury is the six-month London Interbank Offered Rate, which was 1.34 percent as of Wednesday, Bankrate.com reported. LIBOR was 1.35 percent one week prior.
ARM share was 8.9 percent in the Mortgage Market Index for the week ended Feb. 3.
