Rates for home loans hovered near a three-month low, providing some relief for Americans in the market to buy or refinance a mortgage.
In the week ending March 13, 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 6.65%, Freddie Mac announced Thursday. That’s up fractionally from 6.63% last week, but still the lowest since mid-December.
Those figures don’t include fees or points, and rates in some parts of the country may be higher or lower than the national average.
Applications for mortgages have spiked higher in March, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. But as rates and home prices remain elevated, many Americans believe homeownership is increasingly out of reach.
Northwestern Mutual's 2025 Planning & Progress Study found that among Americans who are not currently homeowners, 53% say that owning a home will never be financially affordable – now or in the future. The biggest hurdle, according to respondents of all ages, is the down payment.
But down payment assistance programs have been helping Americans get over that hurdle for many years, and there are now more such programs available than ever before, according to Atlanta-based Down Payment Resource, which tracks them.
All 3,143 U.S. counties have at least one such program, while over 2,000 counties have 10 or more programs, a Down Payment Resource spokesperson told USA TODAY. The average benefit is $18,000, and a state-by-state program guide can be found here.
Andrea Munoz, 34, used down payment assistance from the city of San Antonio when she bought her first home in that city this winter. Munoz is a clinical lab assistant for a university health system and a single mom of five children ranging in age from seven to 17. .
When Munoz was diagnosed with lupus during one of her pregnancies, “It was like a light switch that went off, I’m going to have more bad days than good days,” she said. “I need to show my kids that you can still do good things, and create memories. That was like a turning point.”
It took several years, multiple attempts to work with housing counseling groups, and lots of heartache before Munoz walked in the door at the nonprofit Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS).
“I said I was very frustrated, I felt like I was never going to be able to own a home. It was just like a fading dream,” Munoz told USA TODAY. But NHS staff thought otherwise. They connected her with a real estate agent, and she applied for what she thought was $12,000 of down payment assistance through a city program called Homeownership Incentive Programs.
But when a city employee called to tell her she’d been chosen for one of the HIP awards, the amount was $30,000. With that money, Munoz was able not only to put more money down, but also to buy down her rate a bit and have more left over for closing costs.