It's been slow and steady, to be sure, but mortgage rates finally inched their way up to the highest levels in more than a month today, depending on the lender.  Some rate sheets were in line with April 9/10th levels while a few lenders were back in territory not seen since March 31st.  

Interestingly enough, the higher rates arrive amid modest improvement in bond markets.  Typically, bond market improvement results in lower mortgage rates, but in today's case, lenders were getting caught up with yesterday afternoon's weakness.  In other words, bonds lost ground yesterday and not every lender had the time or will to respond to the market movement in the form of mid-day rate sheet changes.  Instead, they waited until this morning to make the adjustment.

While the move higher does bring the dubious distinction of "highest rates in a month," it still wasn't much of a movement.  Most lenders continue to quote conventional 30yr fixed rates of 4.125% on top tier scenarios, although a few lenders are already up to 4.25%.  

Clearly, rates are trending higher, albeit gradually.  To repeat the same assessment of lock/float risks seen all week: we'd like to see a departure from the aforementioned trend before anything other than a conservative, lock-biased approach makes sense.