Mortgage rates much improved today, the average lender returns more convincingly below the 3.0% threshold for conventional fixed 30-year scenarios. Typically this refers to over 740 credits and 20% principal / down payment on an owner-occupied single family home with a loan amount equal to or less than the compliant loan limit. Get very far away from this path and the rates can go up quite quickly.

Rather than focusing on the specific level of interest rates, the highest and best use of our daily monitoring efforts here is to observe day-to-day changes. With that in mind, today’s rates are the lowest we’ve seen in several weeks, and they line up pretty well with the rates seen on August 11th. Besides, it was also a day before real estate agencies have announced new fees that will impact all refinancings. At first the fees were applicable immediately, but were delayed last week. The delay is the most important reason for recent rate improvements, although consecutive days of bond market improvement have not hurt.

Some of today’s improvements could be due to a specific trading environment at the end of a given month where some traders are required to hold a certain mix of bonds. As such, I would like to see that stability stay intact tomorrow before I get too calm on rate dynamics over the next few days.