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Mortgage Rates Are Actually a Bit Lower This Week

Mortgage rates held fairly steady today with the average lender unchanged to just slightly higher on the day.  That's fairly good news considering yesterday marked the lowest rates in more than a week.  Despite these facts, anyone searching the internet for mortgage rate news today is likely to encounter convincingly-worded articles claiming that rates are HIGHER this week.  So which one of us is lying to you?

In fact, no one is lying.  This is something that runs the risk of happening on any given Thursday when Freddie Mac releases its weekly mortgage rate survey.  For whatever reason, their survey methodology only solicits responses on Monday-Wednesday.  Moreover, based on years of review of Freddie's surveys and actual lender rate sheets, the heaviest weight is given to Monday and almost no weight is given to Wednesday.  As such, yesterday's nice drop in rates didn't register and last week's starting point was set artificially low because Monday was the best day of the week.

Long story short, Freddie's survey is basically telling you that this past Monday's rates were higher than the Monday before that.  If that's useful to you, there you go.  For those who want to know what's going on today, the average lender is quoting rates that are just a bit lower than last Monday's or last Friday's for that matter.  The improvement is small enough that it would only effect the closing cost side of the mortgage rate equation (as opposed to the "note rate" itself), but it is an improvement nonetheless.

This Daily Mortgage Rate Update is provided in partnership with Mortgage News Daily.