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Mortgage Rates Drop to 4.57, Another Record

  • July 9th 2010

by Will Smith

Mortgage Rates Drop to 4.57, Another Record: Figure 1

Mortgage rates set a record this week, with Freddie Mac reporting 4.57 as the average on a 30-year fixed. And no, you are not reading a week-old UrbanTurf article; this is the third week in a row we have reported that mortgage rates are at their lowest since tracking began in 1971.

One thing that is different from last week is that refinancing applications jumped to their highest point in over a year. Which makes sense, because when rates fall refinancing and mortgage applications typically rise as consumers move to take advantage of the lower rate. But the past few weeks have been an exception — even with rates at record-breaking lows, refinancing was down, not up. Analysts surmised that the counter-intuitively soft demand was due to the fact that most people eligible to refinance already had when rates broke the 5 percent threshold last year.

For reference, rates were at 5.20 this time last year. On a $280,000 mortgage, the difference in monthly payments between that rate and this week’s 4.57 is $1,538 versus $1,430, or more than a hundred bucks a month.

See other articles related to: dc area market trends, mortgage rates

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/mortgage_rates_drop_to_4.57_another_record/2247.

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