Mortgage rates hit their lowest levels of the month today!  Sure, that's only 10 business days for the mortgage world, but we'll take every little victory we can get these days.  Why is that?  Because "these days" have been pretty rough.  Exactly one week ago, rates were at their highest levels in nearly 8 years.

The assertion about today's rates runs counter to quite a few news stories.  Major media outlets are reporting rates as being 'unchanged' this week.  That wasn't necessarily incorrect until today. In those cases, reporters are relying on Freddie Mac's weekly survey data.  The survey only collects responses from Monday through Wednesday and the results tend to over-represent Monday and Tuesday's rates on any given week.  Long story short, as of yesterday, it would have been fair to say rates were indeed unchanged this week.  Nearly all of the improvement happened today.

The likelihood of additional improvements remains to be seen.  As far as the past several months are concerned, we really haven't seen stretches of good luck look much better than this one.  As such, those who'd been floating last week may want to consider locking this week, assuming that's an option.  It's not out of the question for rates to improve further, but that's dependent on several other volatile variables.