By Sabrina Karl
It’s been an eventful six months for mortgage rates, and the drama has yet to let up, providing ample opportunity for millions of home buyers and owners to still capitalize with a new or refinanced loan.
Let’s rewind to early February, when coronavirus fears in the U.S. were just germinating. Freddie Mac’s national weekly average of 30-year fixed mortgage rates dropped to 3.45%, the lowest the industry had seen in three and half years, when rates declined to 3.42% in October 2016.
But that was just an early sign of much more significant movement in the near future. Freddie Mac has been tracking its weekly mortgage average for almost 50 years, since 1971, and on March 6 of this year, the average dropped to its lowest reading ever, hitting 3.29%. The previous low was 3.31% in November 2012.
March’s “historic low” has not held onto its title, though, as the Freddie Mac 30-year average has delivered seven more all-time lows since then. Even more notable is that we have now dropped into averages below 3%, with Freddie Mac recording its first average below that threshold on July 16.
Then came last week’s reading, released as usual on Thursday. Dropping Freddie Mac’s historic low yet again, the average 30-year rate registered at just 2.88%.
It’s a far cry from the 3.60% average rate we saw last August. Or the 52-week high of 3.78% we saw at Halloween.
No one can ever reliably predict mortgage rates and how low they’ll go. But it’s possible we haven’t seen the bottom yet. Still, conventional wisdom on locking mortgage rates suggests securing a rate that is “in the neighborhood” of what will ultimately be the low, and being content there, as holding out for a lower rate may backfire if rates instead go up.