Mortgage rates rose today, but by a small enough amount that it shouldn't crush too many hopes and dreams.  For all intents and purposes, rates remain in line with the lowest levels since November 2016.  Any movement in recent weeks has been limited to "upfront costs" as opposed to interest rates themselves.

That has the potential to be a bit confusing, so I like to break it down from time to time.  Now is one of those times!  

There are upfront costs tied to your interest rate.  They can be positive or negative.  Markets tend not to move enough for rates to change to the next .125% higher or lower (the typical gap between adjacent rate offerings).  The upfront costs allow a sort of "fine-tuning" of the overall cost of financing.  The longer the mortgage is retained, the smaller the impact the upfront costs will have on the overall cost of financing.

When markets aren't moving much, our observations of mortgage rate changes are strictly limited to these upfront costs, but we extrapolate them into rate format in order to keep things tangible.  In other words, if rates could move in 0.01% increments, that would be the extent of today's weakness.

3.875% remains the most prevalently-quoted conventional 30yr fixed rate for top tier scenarios, although quite a few lenders remain at 4.00%.   Today's upfront costs for 3.875% would be slightly higher than yesterday's.