Interest rates on home loans inched up only slightly this week after Friday’s positive employment report, which showed the economy added more jobs than economists were expecting and the national unemployment rate dropped to 8.8 percent.
According to the weekly mortgage rate survey released byFreddie Mac Thursday, the average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage edged up to 4.87 percent (0.7 point) for the week ending April 7.
That’s up just 1 basis point from 4.86 percent reported by theGSE last week. It’s the third consecutive week that the 30-year rate has headed higher, but Freddie stressed that
it remains well below the average of 5.21 percent recorded a year ago.
The 15-year fixed-mortgage rate this week averaged 4.10 percent (0.7 point) in Freddie’s study, up from last week’s average of 4.09 percent. A year ago at this time, the 15-year rate came in at 4.52 percent.
Adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) were mixed in the GSE’s survey. The 5-year ARM averaged 3.72 percent this week (0.6 point), up from 3.70 percent last week, while the 1-year ARMposted an average of 3.22 percent (0.7 point), down from last week’s 3.26 percent.
Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac’s VP, described mortgage rates this week as “little changed” amid what he says were “encouraging” employment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nothaft offered a breakdown of the job market numbers, putting them into perspective in the context of trends observed since the economic downturn.
“The economy added 216,000 jobs in March and the unemployment rate fell for the fifth consecutive month to 8.8 percent marking the lowest rate in two years,” he explained. “Additionally, the private sector has gained 560,000 workers in the first quarter of this year, which represents the largest quarterly increase since the first quarter of 2006.”
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