• Tweet

• Tweet

Today was a usual Thursday morning for me.  I woke up, went through my morning routine, hit the coffee pot for a couple cups, and checked in on the Weekly Primary Mortgage Market Survey from Freddie Mac to see what happened with our rates over the course of the week.

Then my usual Thursday morning became rather unique when I opened the webpage to see that mortgage rates hit a new all-time low.

That’s right, folks – All. Time. Record. Low.

Now, I’m a man of many words, and my team members and friends can attest to this, but I am really running out of ways to describe these rates.  All-time record lows, lowest rates ever recorded, incredibly low, amazingly low, so on and so forth.

So, I’ll sum it up as this: MORTGAGE RATES ARE INCREDIBLY, AMAZINGLY, UNBELIEVABLY, ASTONISHINGLY LOW.

All four mortgage rates documented by the PMMS report saw pretty sizable drops, so let’s take a look at the numbers.

30-year fixed mortgage rates fell to 3.89 percent with 0.7 points this week from last week’s previous record low of 3.91 percent with 0.8 points.  This is insane because seeing 30-year fixed mortgage rates below 4.00 percent used to be wishful thinking.  Last year at this time, 30-year fixed mortgage rates averaged 4.71 percent.

15-year fixed mortgage rates saw a pretty sizable drop over the course of the week, falling to 3.16 percent with 0.8 points this week from last week’s 3.23 percent with 0.8 points.  This figure is also a record low.  Last year, 15-year fixed rates averaged 4.08 percent.

5/1-year ARMs came in last week at 2.86 percent with 0.7 points but fell to 2.82 percent with 0.7 points this week.  1-year ARMs also saw a decrease this week, falling from last week’s 2.80 percent with 0.6 points to 2.76 percent with 0.6 points this week.

12 months ago, 5/1-year ARMs and 1-year ARMs averaged 3.72 percent and 3.23 percent respectively.

With these unbelievably low mortgage rates, surely my main man Frank Nothaft, vice president and chief economist for Freddie Mac, would provide some great insight, right?

Right.

He explained, “Mortgage rates eased slightly this week to all-time record lows following mixed indicators in the labor market.  Although the economy added 1.6 million jobs in 2011, which was the most since 2006, the unemployment rate remained historically elevated.  The 2009 to 2011 period had the highest three-year average unemployment rate since 1939 to 1941.”

So pretty much, Frankie is just as surprised as I am about the mortgage rates, given the instability of our economy.  Unemployment is down but still historically high, yet mortgage rates keep creeping down to all-time lows.

The fact of the matter is – has there been a better time to refinance or lock yourself into a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage than right now?

I can’t think of one.

What are you waiting for?

Eric Mally is a writer for Quicken Loans, an amazing place to work.  Find out more about being a part of our team at Quicken Loans and learn how we Amaze our clients.

 Printer Friendly Version