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US mortgage rates moved just a smidge higher this week, as reported by Freddie Mac, with the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage ticking up from 6.65% to 6.67% while the 15-year mortgage rate inched up to 5.83%.
Yahoo Finance senior housing reporter Claire Boston highlights the latest mortgage rate data and trends in US rent prices.
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Wealth here.
Mortgage rates for the week ending March 20th are out. Yahoo finances Claire Boston joins me now with the numbers. Claire, what do we know?
Hi. So the 30-year mortgage rate this week is 6.67%, that is up just a hair from 6.65% last week. 15-year mortgage rates this week average 5.83%, and it's up just a bit again from 5.8%. Ultimately, we're looking at rates that are essentially flat this week, which makes sense. We didn't really have a lot of market volatility this week. And um, I was paying close attention to the Fed meeting yesterday. The Fed ultimately held interest rates flat, they still expect to cut twice this year, and the markets are really interpreting that as kind of like a no news is good news situation. We have seen treasury yields fall a little bit, uh, yesterday and today, and that may mean that mortgage rates fall a little bit next week, but right now, we're kind of in this 6.7% holding pattern.
Claire, we have a comment here from Sam Kater, Freddie Mac's chief economist, saying the 30-year fixed rate mortgage has stayed under 7% for nine consecutive weeks, which is helpful for potential buyers and sellers like here. Buying is expensive, but what about rents here? I mean, you've got some new data on single family rent growth. What can consumers expect there?
Yeah, Brad. Unfortunately, on the rental front, it is also pretty bad news for consumers. CoreLogic has some data that showed in January single family home rents were up 2.4%. Um, that is an acceleration of the rate of change since December. Um, it's really a hard time out here to afford any sort of housing. One other thing that I thought was interesting about this data is that the DC area actually saw some of the fastest growing rents. You know, we've heard a lot about how the Fed job cuts may affect the DC housing market, and so far we haven't really seen any signs of that, but you know, it is pretty early days.
All right. Thanks so much, Claire, for taking the time breaking down these figures from the most recent mortgage rates information and data. Yahoo finances on Claire Boston.
Thank you.