December 15, 2015
With a great deal of anticipation on Wednesday’s Fed meeting, it’s no surprise that there’s some volatility in mortgage rates this week–Monday saw rates creeping higher ahead of the Fed; there is much speculation about the potential for the first interest rate hike by the Fed since 2006. Whether or not that happens remains to be seen, but in the meantime investor behavior in the days leading up to the Fed meeting creates days like this.
And that means that at the time of this writing, 30-year fixed rate conventional mortgages were, best execution-wise, running between 4.0% and 4.125% depending on the lender. Our sources report that some lenders are still aggressively offering rates below the 4.0% range to the best qualified borrowers, but experience may vary depending on a variety of factors.
At the time of this writing FHA mortgage loan rates were, best execution, quoted at the 3.75% comfort zone they’ve been in for some time. As usual, your FICO scores and other financial qualifications play a large role in your access to best execution rates and FHA rates may vary more among participating lenders than their conventional counterparts. These rates are not available to all borrowers or from all lenders. Your experience may vary.
Industry pros are more unanimous at present–there’s very little disagreement about floating. This is a time of elevated risk for holding out on a mortgage rate lock with your lender, especially for those who have closing dates looming. “Lock” is a word many are using in their advice to borrowers on the fence about a mortgage rate commitment.
We’ll be keeping a close eye on mortgage rate developments this week as we get closer to the Fed meeting. It’s going to be a very interesting time to watch the rate trends–investor reaction to the Fed announcement and any other factors such as breaking news and other scheduled economic data releases can also play a contributing role to mortgage rate volatility this week.
Do you work in residential real estate? You should know about the free tool offered by FHA.com. It is designed especially for real estate websites; a widget that displays FHA loan limits for the counties serviced by those sites. It is simple to spend a few seconds customizing the state, counties, and widget size for the tool; you can copy the code and paste it into your website with ease. Get yours today:
http://www.fha.com/fha_loan_limits_widget
Joe Wallace has been specializing in military and personal finance topics since 1995. His work has appeared on Air Force Television News, The Pentagon Channel, ABC and a variety of print and online publications. He is a 13-year Air Force veteran and a member of the Air Force Public Affairs Alumni Association. He was Managing editor for www.valoans.com for (8) years and is currently the Associate Editor for FHANewsblog.com.
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