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Honestly, I was expecting a little more excitement this morning when Freddie Mac’s Weekly Primary Mortgage Market Survey was released. My buddy and I made some bets this morning as to which direction we thought 30-year fixed mortgage rates would go.

Yes, we bet on which direction mortgage rates were going to go. No, we don’t have a problem.

Anyway, he said they were going to inch up a little bit, and I thought they were going to drop marginally.

It turns out that we were both wrong.

30-year fixed mortgage rates didn’t budge a point over the course of the week, holding pat at 3.87 percent with 0.8 points. This ties the record for the lowest rate ever for a 30-year fixed mortgage set last week. Here’s the kicker though – 12 months ago, 30-year fixed mortgage rates averaged 5.05 percent. Talk about a difference, eh?

15-year fixed mortgage rates climbed slightly to 3.16 percent with 0.7 points from last week’s 3.14 percent with 0.8 points. Last year at this time, 15-year fixed mortgage rates averaged 4.29 percent. For you non-mathematic types out there, that is a drop of 1.13 percent over a 12-month period.

5/1-year ARMs jumped a little bit as well to 2.83 percent with 0.7 points from last week’s 2.80 percent with 0.7 points. 1-year ARMs also climbed a little bit from last week’s 2.76 percent with 0.6 points to 2.78 percent with 0.6 points.

A year ago, 5/1-year ARMs and 1-year ARMs averaged 3.92 percent and 3.35 percent respectively.

If you have been following our PMMS reports for a while now, you know what time this part of the post is: it’s time to hear from our dear friend Frank Nothaft, vice president and chief economist from Freddie Mac.

Frank chimed in by saying “a strong January employment report added upward pressure to most mortgage rates this week. The economy gained 243,000 jobs last month, the largest monthly gain since April 2011, and the unemployment rate fell to 8.3 percent, which was the lowest since February 2009. Although historical revisions also added 266,000 more workers, they caused the labor participation rate to fall to 63.7 percent, representing the smallest share since May 1983, which offset some of the rise in mortgage rates.”

Frank always comes out strong with some great insight for us.

All kidding aside, really there is no way to tell whether or not these rates will go up. Remember a couple weeks back when they jumped 0.10 percent out of nowhere on us?

Don’t wait for rates to jump again. Refinance or lock in to a new 30-year fixed mortgage today!

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