November 23, 2015
Mortgage rates moved to fourteen day lows on Thursday of last week, and overall there seems to be some back-and forth (if Friday’s strong start and weakness later in the day is any indication) keeping rates about where they’ve been since the initial push higher. We saw six days of upward movement, followed by some relief, and now a few attempts to recover the lost ground.
30 year fixed rate conventional mortgages seem to be waffling between 4.0 and 4.125% best execution (depending on the lender). The last two days of improvement would likely have borrowers seeing the difference in closing costs rather than an actual movement of rates; this is typical. FHA mortgages remain in what appears to be a new comfort zone of 3.75% best execution.
Keep in mind that FHA mortgage rates may vary more among participating lenders than conventional mortgage rates, and your access to the best execution rates you see mentioned here depend greatly on your FICO scores, loan repayment history and other financial qualifying factors. Your experience may vary. Best execution rates may not be available to all borrowers or from all lenders.
Locking and floating remains divided among industry pros–at least over the short term. Some advise floating only if you are longer than 30 days away from closing, while others are looking at the Fed interest rate hike issue as a major potential for volatility in the next several weeks and urging people to consider locking, especially 30 days or less from closing.
The choice is the borrower’s to make, but it’s best to get some informed advice from your loan officer when considering your options. Fed interest rate hike concerns aside, there is plenty of potential from other areas to put upward pressure on mortgage rates; global headlines, domestic economic data release, all these things could individually influence the mortgage rate environment.
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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