March 21, 2016
Friday closed out the week slightly lower, which means that a majority of last week brought some form of mortgage loan rate improvement or at the very least no moves higher. All days but one last week were marked by some kind of small gain, taking back some of the losses from the week prior.
At the time of this writing, 30-year fixed rate conventional mortgages are in a best execution range between 3.625% (likely the most competitive lenders are offering something at or near this) and 3.875%. Our sources note that the average best execution rate offering likely falls somewhere in the middle of this range.
FHA mortgage loan interest rates remain in their best execution comfort zone in a range we’ve reported for some time now–between 3.25% and 3.5%. Best execution rates listed here are not available to all borrowers or from all lenders. Your experience may vary depending on the lender, your FICO scores and other variables.
Going into the new week it’s difficult to say which way things might be headed. However, there are some scheduled economic data releases this week that do have the power to move rates one way or the other depending on how investors react to the information. Later today (Monday) an Existing Home Sales report is due out, with New Home Sales scheduled for a Wednesday release.
Friday will be the day fourth quarter Gross Domestic Product data is released, so this week could be full of ups and downs, but breaking news from other sectors or from overseas could also affect how this information gets responded to.
Rates have potential to be affected by all, some, or none of these economic data releases. Sometimes a report that was hugely anticipated last time is completely ignored in favor of some other breaking news item. That can push rates higher or lower depending on how investors respond.
If you are on the fence about locking a mortgage loan interest rate commitment with the lender or floating a while longer in hopes that rates get even lower, have a chat with your loan officer and get some good advice on how to proceed 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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