Mortgages Rates Just Barely Higher. Bigger Moves Are Likely Ahead

Mortgage rates barely budged today.  The average lender was just a hair higher compared to Friday’s top tier conventional 30yr fixed rate offerings. In other words, if you were thinking of locking in a rate last week, things would look about the same today.  This wasn’t necessarily the case earlier this morning, but modest improvement in the bond market allowed lenders to publish revised rates in the afternoon.

As always, keep in mind that when we talk about “movement” here on the daily rate coverage, it’s typically smaller than almost anyone would care about.  That’s because we’re tracking rates at a granular level every day whereas more meaningful moves don’t reliably happen that quickly.  The rest of this week could be an exception, however, as there are multiple events with the power to cause volatility.

There’s no way to know which way that volatility will resolve ahead of time.  There are things we simply cannot know about these events.  For instance, if the jobs report shows lower-than-expected job growth, that would likely push rates lower.  If it were to show ongoing resilience, rates would likely move up.

The biggest risk (or opportunity) involves a cohesive message across multiple economic reports and events.  In other words, if the economic data on Tue-Fri sends the same message as the Fed announcement on Wednesday, and if a handful of other relevant events argue the same case, rates could move significantly higher or lower by Friday afternoon.