Editor’s Note: The Mortgage Mix is RISMedia’s weekly highlight reel of need-to-know mortgage-industry happenings. Watch for it each Friday afternoon.
- Per the latest survey by Freddie Mac, mortgage rates experienced a noticeable drop during the first week of August 2024–the lowest rate in over a year, in fact.
- The 30-year mortgage rate is 6.47%, down from 6.73% the previous week and an almost .5% drop from the previous year.
- The-15 year mortgage rate is 5.63%, down 5.99% from the previous week and from 6.34% the prior year.
- Unsurprisingly, this drop was accompanied by an uptick of mortgage applications–the Mortgage Bankers Association said that for the week of August 2, 2024, applications increased by 6.9%.
- Since reaching 7% in October 2022, mortgage rates have largely not fallen far below the 7% threshold. These latest results are some of the first concrete signs that rates might finally be dropping in a more sustained fashion, after a forecasted turnaround at the start of 2024 did not pan out.
- Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist, attributed the large drop to economic uncertainty (such as the noticeable stock market drop on Monday August 5).
- “Mortgage rates plunged this week to their lowest level in over a year following the likely overreaction to a less than favorable employment report and financial market turbulence for an economy that remains on solid footing,” said Khater.
- United Mortgage is currently anticipating the Federal Reserve will be making an interest rate cut and is preparing for a “refinance boom” that even a small cut could bring.
- Indeed, results show that the most recent number of refinance applications was 60% higher than in August 2023.
