30- and 15-Year Home Loan Interest Rates Fall
Apply for a Loan
Secured with SHA-256 Encryption
|
Written by
Sara Routhier
|
|
Reviewed by
Joel Ohman
|
UPDATED: Jul 13, 2012
Advertiser Disclosure: We strive to help you make confident loan decisions. Comparison shopping should be easy. We are not affiliated with any one loan provider and cannot guarantee quotes from any single provider. Our partnerships don’t influence our content. Our opinions are our own. To compare quotes from many different companies please enter your ZIP code on this page to use the free quote tool. The more quotes you compare, the more chances to save.
Editorial Guidelines: We are a free online resource for anyone interested in learning more about loans. Our goal is to be an objective, third-party resource for everything loan related. We update our site regularly, and all content is reviewed by experts.
Home loan interest rates fell again this week, breaking yet another historic record. According to Freddie Mac’s weekly report on interest rates, 30- and 15-year home loans hit never-before-seen low rates.
As of Thursday, the 30-year fixed-rate home loan averaged at 3.56 percent. That’s a 0.06 percent drop from last week’s historic low level.
The 15-year fixed-rate home loan averaged at 2.74 percent, which is a 0.05 percent drop from last week’s reported level.
In addition to the low fixed-rate mortgages, mortgages with adjustable rates (ARMs) are also experiencing extremely low levels. However, only one of the two saw a decline.
The 5-year ARM averaged at 2.74 percent this week, which is down by 0.05 percent from last week.
The 1-year ARM averaged at 2.69 percent, which is actually up from last week by 0.01 percent.
While these extremely cheap home loan options provide wonderful opportunities for willing and able buyers looking to snatch up a new property, they’re revealing of something slightly more sinister than just a poor seller’s market.
“Following a lackluster employment report for June, long-term U.S. Treasury bond yields eased somewhat this week allowing fixed mortgage rates to reach yet another record low,” said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac’s vice president and chief economist, in a press release.
Our unemployment rate seems stuck at 8.2 percent, and last month’s job report, boasting the creation of only 80,000 new jobs nationwide, did little to help that number.
Judging by Nothaft’s explanation, if the unemployment problem remains consistent, so will our real estate market’s falling interest rates.