Mortgage And Refinance Rates, May 31 | Rates rising today

Today’s mortgage and refinance rates

Markets were closed yesterday for Memorial Day. And average mortgage rates last Friday barely moved. Still, taken as a whole, last week was a good one for those rates.

Unfortunately, it’s looking this morning as if mortgage rates today might rise, perhaps sharply. Normally, I say that an early movement might change later in the day. And that’s always possible. But it would take an enormous swing for those rates to fall today.

Current mortgage and refinance rates

Should you lock a mortgage rate today?

Don't lock on a day when mortgage rates look set to fall. My recommendations (below) are intended to give longer-term suggestions about the overall direction of those rates. So, they don’t change daily to reflect fleeting sentiments in volatile markets.

The stock market is mercurial at the moment. One week it’s plunging and the next it’s soaring.

That’s largely a result of continuing uncertainty. And that applies to the market that largely determines mortgage rates as it does to others. This makes predicting where those rates will move over days and weeks close to impossible.

But, because I’m cautious, my personal rate lock recommendations for the longer term remain:

>Related: 7 Tips to get the best refinance rate

Market data affecting today’s mortgage rates

Markets were closed yesterday for Memorial Day. Here’s a snapshot of the state of play this morning at about 9:50 a.m. (ET). The data, compared with roughly the same time last Friday, were:

*A movement of less than $20 on gold prices or 40 cents on oil ones is a change of 1% or less. So we only count meaningful differences as good or bad for mortgage rates.

Caveats about markets and rates

Before the pandemic and the Federal Reserve’s interventions in the mortgage market, you could look at the above figures and make a pretty good guess about what would happen to mortgage rates that day. But that’s no longer the case. We still make daily calls. And are usually right. But our record for accuracy won’t achieve its former high levels until things settle down.

So use markets only as a rough guide. Because they have to be exceptionally strong or weak to rely on them. But, with that caveat, mortgage rates today might climb. However, be aware that “intraday swings” (when rates change direction during the day) are a common feature right now.

Important notes on today’s mortgage rates

Here are some things you need to know:

A lot is going on at the moment. And nobody can claim to know with certainty what will happen to mortgage rates in the coming hours, days, weeks or months.

Are mortgage and refinance rates rising or falling?

Mortgage rates have been falling over the last couple of weeks. Those falls haven’t been big. But they’ve made a welcome change after several disastrous months.

However, nobody can be sure where they’ll head next. Markets right now are generally highly unpredictable as they swing from optimistic to pessimistic, sometimes within a few hours.

My gut feeling (it’s no more than that) is that we’ll be seeing higher mortgage rates again sometime soon. I doubt that markets have fully priced in the effects of higher interest rates from the Fed in the future, nor the inflationary impact of Russia’s continuing invasion of Ukraine.

But let’s hope I’m wrong. The longer mortgage rates move lower, the better.

Read the weekend edition of this daily article for more background.

Recent trends

Over much of 2020, the overall trend for mortgage rates was clearly downward. And a new, weekly all-time low was set on 16 occasions that year, according to Freddie Mac.

The most recent weekly record low occurred on Jan. 7, 2021, when it stood at 2.65% for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages.

Rates then bumbled along, moving little for the following eight or nine months. But they began rising noticeably that September. Unfortunately, they’ve been mostly shooting up since the start of 2022.

Freddie’s May 26 report puts that same weekly average for 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages at 5.1% (with 0.9 fees and points), down from the previous week’s 5.25%.

Note that Freddie expects you to buy discount points (“with 0.9 fees and points”) on closing that earn you a lower rate. If you don’t do that, your rate would be closer to the ones we and others quote.

Expert mortgage rate forecasts

Looking further ahead, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) each has a team of economists dedicated to monitoring and forecasting what will happen to the economy, the housing sector and mortgage rates.

And here are their current rate forecasts for the remaining three quarters of 2022 (Q2/22, Q3/22, Q4/22) and the first quarter of next year (Q1/23).

The numbers in the table below are for 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages. Fannie’s were published on May 19, and the MBA’s on May 16. Freddie’s were released on Apr. 18. But it now updates its figures only quarterly so they’re already looking stale.

Of course, given so many unknowables, the whole current crop of forecasts might be even more speculative than usual.

Find your lowest rate today

You should comparison shop widely, no matter what sort of mortgage you want. As federal regulator the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says:

“Shopping around for your mortgage has the potential to lead to real savings. It may not sound like much, but saving even a quarter of a point in interest on your mortgage saves you thousands of dollars over the life of your loan.”

Mortgage rate methodology

The Mortgage Reports receives rates based on selected criteria from multiple lending partners each day. We arrive at an average rate and APR for each loan type to display in our chart. Because we average an array of rates, it gives you a better idea of what you might find in the marketplace. Furthermore, we average rates for the same loan types. For example, FHA fixed with FHA fixed. The end result is a good snapshot of daily rates and how they change over time.