It’s Been One Year of Incredibly Low 30-Year Fixed Rate Mortgages!

• Tweet

• Tweet

It’s an exciting week in the world of the Primary Mortgage Market Survey, or PMMS if you’re cool like that with abbreviations. If you’re a weekly reader of the PMMS report here at the Zing Blog, good on you, and you’ll remember that last week’s PMMS reported fixed-rate mortgages were on the rise. This has ceased, and reversed! Fixed-rate mortgages are back near where they were about two weeks ago, and our awesome weekly readers will remember two weeks ago that rates were nearing record lows. As if that weren’t enough to put you in a good mood, I’ve got the mortgage-rate cherry to put on top of this housing sundae, straight from Freddie Mac: As of this week, 30-year fixed rate mortgages have remained below 4 percent for an entire year. I can’t say enough, there ain’t no time like the present to lock in a mortgage! Rates rose last week, there’s never a guarantee to where they’ll be next week. Enough of my babbling, here are the cold hard statistics for this week’s PMMS report:

30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 3.54 percent with an average 0.8 for the week. This is down from last week when it averaged 3.63 percent. Last year at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 4.08 percent.

15-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 2.72 percent with an average 0.7 point, down from last week when it averaged 2.79 percent. A year ago at this time, the 15-year FRM averaged 2.96 percent.

The 5-year adjustable rate mortgage averaged 2.61 percent this week with an average 0.6 point, the same as it was last week. A year ago, the 5-year ARM averaged 2.96.

The 1-year adjustable rate mortgage averaged 2.63 percent this week with an average 0.4 point, down from last week when it averaged 2.64 percent. At this time last year the 1-year ARM averaged 2.84 percent.

Alright, calm down dear reader. I know, I’m freaking out from these numbers too. But that’s not all; it’s time for an even more in depth explanation of the fluctuating rates from Frank Nothaft, the VP and chief economist of Freddie Mac, with the best news of all:

“Low and stable inflation is placing downward pressure on fixed mortgage rates. Annual growth in the consumer price index has remained at or below 2 percent for the past four months, and for the producer price index even lower. This, in part, is why the Federal Reserve monetary policy committee on March 20th lowered the upper end of its inflation forecast for 2013. In addition, our March Outlook calls for 30-year fixed mortgage rates to remain below 4 percent throughout this year.”

You read that right, 30-year FRM is speculated to remain below 4 percent for the rest of the year! Get it while it’s still low. However, there’s still no speculation to how quickly it can raise to that. As always, join me next week for more exciting news in the weekly PMMS report.