Bankrate follows a strict editorial policy, so you can trust that we’re putting your interests first. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions.
Key Principles
We value your trust. Our mission is to provide readers with accurate and unbiased information, and we have editorial standards in place to ensure that happens. Our editors and reporters thoroughly fact-check editorial content to ensure the information you’re reading is accurate. We maintain a firewall between our advertisers and our editorial team. Our editorial team does not receive direct compensation from our advertisers.
Editorial Independence
Bankrate’s editorial team writes on behalf of YOU – the reader. Our goal is to give you the best advice to help you make smart personal finance decisions. We follow strict guidelines to ensure that our editorial content is not influenced by advertisers. Our editorial team receives no direct compensation from advertisers, and our content is thoroughly fact-checked to ensure accuracy. So, whether you’re reading an article or a review, you can trust that you’re getting credible and dependable information.
You have money questions. Bankrate has answers. Our experts have been helping you master your money for over four decades. We continually strive to provide consumers with the expert advice and tools needed to succeed throughout life’s financial journey.
Bankrate follows a strict editorial policy, so you can trust that our content is honest and accurate. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions. The content created by our editorial staff is objective, factual, and not influenced by our advertisers.
We’re transparent about how we are able to bring quality content, competitive rates, and useful tools to you by explaining how we make money.
Bankrate.com is an independent, advertising-supported publisher and comparison service. We are compensated in exchange for placement of sponsored products and, services, or by you clicking on certain links posted on our site. Therefore, this compensation may impact how, where and in what order products appear within listing categories. Other factors, such as our own proprietary website rules and whether a product is offered in your area or at your self-selected credit score range can also impact how and where products appear on this site. While we strive to provide a wide range offers, Bankrate does not include information about every financial or credit product or service.
With the economic outlook brightening, mortgage rates are widely expected to rebound from their record lows. Instead, rates fell again this week, reaching yet another record low, according to a Bankrate survey released Wednesday.
The average cost of a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage dropped to 2.96 percent from last week’s 2.99 percent in Bankrate’s national survey of lenders. The 15-year fixed rose ever so slightly, climbing to 2.4 percent. Bankrate includes origination points and other fees in its figure. The 30-year fixed-rate loans in this week’s survey included an average total of 0.31 discount and origination points.
Mortgage rates have been in steady decline since the coronavirus recession began earlier this year, a trend that has helped drive the surprisingly strong housing market. However, rates ticked up a bit last month and stocks soared on optimism about the presidential election, potential vaccines for the coronavirus and an improving labor market.
The recent drop in mortgage rates reflects mixed signals from the economy. An autumn spike in coronavirus cases undermined hopeful signs that a COVID-19 vaccine soon will be available, and the economic recovery so far has been uneven and incomplete.
Michael Fratantoni, chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association, says mortgage rates will start rising soon. For now, he calls the disconnect between the economic outlook and mortgage rates “very counterintuitive.”
Some 46 percent of mortgage experts polled by Bankrate expect rates to remain the same in the coming week, while 46 percent expect rates to remain the same.
“Our expectations are for slightly higher rates given the prospect of a new stimulus deal and rising 10-year yields,” says Ralph McLaughlin, chief economist at financial technology firm Haus.com.
The 10-year Treasury yield, a key indicator for mortgage rates, flirted with 1 percent last month but was at 0.92 percent as of Wednesday.
Learn more:
Share