4.40: Mortgage Rates Remain Unchanged

• August 15th 2013

by Shilpi Paul

Mortgage rates held steady, remaining unchanged since last week.

On Thursday morning, Freddie Mac reported 4.40 percent with an average 0.7 point as the average on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, matching last week’s average.

At this time last year, rates averaged 3.62 percent. If you are interested in seeing how a year’s difference impacts a mortgage payment, check out our calculations from last week.

From Freddie Mac vice president and chief economist Frank Nothaft on today’s rates:

Fixed mortgage rates have been bouncing around over the past few weeks on market speculation that the Fed will taper some of its monetary stimulus. In fact, 65 percent of economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect the Fed to reduce the amount of bond purchases at its September 17th and 18th monetary policy committee meetings. Currently, mortgage rates on 30-year fixed mortgages are 1.1 percentage points above their all-time low set on November 21, 2012, which translates into $125 more per month in mortgage payments on a $200,000 loan.

The UrbanTurf Mortgage Rate Disclaimer: The rates reported by Freddie Mac for 30-year mortgages are usually the best rates that the most qualified borrowers can get, so borrowers or those considering refinancing should not necessarily read this news and think that they can go out and get a loan with the quoted interest rate.

Here’s a look at the path of rates since January 2010:

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/4.40_mortgage_rates_remain_unchanged/7463.