Mortgage rates on new 30 year loans held at a 6.89% average on Friday, staying flat after climbing for two straight days and landing just under the one month high of 6.91% touched twice the week before. The pause offers a brief breather for buyers navigating a market that remains far pricier than last fall, even as other loan types moved in mixed directions the same day.
Where Rates Stand Across Loan Types
The 30 year fixed average of 6.89% is meaningfully better than the 7.15% level reached six weeks earlier, which was the most expensive reading in a year. It also sits well under the 8.01% peak from late 2023, a 23 year high for the benchmark product. Homebuyers had it easier last fall, though, when the 30 year average briefly dropped to 5.89%, a two year low that now looks increasingly out of reach in the near term.
15 year fixed rates fell 2 basis points Friday to 5.90%, continuing a retreat from the 6.31% level hit in mid April. That's more than a full percentage point below the 7.08% high from October 2023. Notably, the 15 year average had touched a four month low of 5.70% on June 30, and last September it sank to 4.97%, the cheapest in two years. Jumbo 30 year loans ticked up 1 basis point to 6.81%, a touch above the 6.74% mark from July 1 that had been the lowest since March. Jumbo rates remain far below their October 2023 peak of 8.14%, though last fall's low of 6.24% shows how much room there still is for improvement.
| Loan Type | New Purchase Rate | Daily Change |
|---|---|---|
| 30 Year Fixed | 6.89% | No change |
| FHA 30 Year Fixed | 7.55% | No change |
| VA 30 Year Fixed | 6.58% | No change |
| 20 Year Fixed | 6.74% | +0.01 |
| 15 Year Fixed | 5.90% | -0.02 |
| FHA 15 Year Fixed | 6.76% | No change |
| 10 Year Fixed | 5.74% | -0.02 |
| 7/6 ARM | 7.40% | +0.02 |
| 5/6 ARM | 7.38% | +0.03 |
| Jumbo 30 Year Fixed | 6.81% | +0.01 |
| Jumbo 15 Year Fixed | 6.79% | +0.03 |
| Jumbo 7/6 ARM | 7.18% | -0.19 |
| Jumbo 5/6 ARM | 7.22% | -0.04 |
These figures come via the Zillow Mortgage API and assume an 80% loan to value ratio (a down payment of at least 20%) along with a credit score in the 680 to 739 range. Borrowers with different profiles, particularly those with lower credit scores or smaller down payments, should expect quotes that diverge from these averages, sometimes by a meaningful margin.
Why Freddie Mac's Number Looks Different
Freddie Mac, the government sponsored entity that buys mortgage loans from lenders, published its own weekly 30 year average last Thursday at 6.74%, down 1 basis point from the prior week. That figure sits 7 basis points above the three month low from early July and well above the two year low of 6.08% reached last September. For context, Freddie Mac's average spiked to a historic 7.79% in October 2023, the highest reading in 23 years.
The gap between that number and the daily 6.89% average cited above isn't a contradiction. Freddie Mac calculates its figure as a rolling weekly average built from the previous five days of data, while daily trackers like the one referenced here update in near real time, which tends to produce a sharper, more current signal on where rates are actually moving. The two also use different underlying loan criteria, including assumptions about down payment size and credit score, so they're best treated as complementary gauges rather than interchangeable ones.
Anyone comparing advertised online rates to either average should be skeptical of headline numbers. Teaser rates are frequently built around a borrower with an unusually strong credit profile, a smaller than typical loan balance, or an assumption that the borrower pays points upfront to buy the rate down. None of that is disclosed prominently in most marketing, which is exactly why shopping multiple lenders and getting an actual quote based on your own financial profile matters more than chasing the lowest number in an ad.
What's Actually Driving These Swings
Rate movement traces back to a handful of forces that interact in ways that make single day changes hard to attribute cleanly: the direction of the bond market, especially 10 year Treasury yields, the Federal Reserve's policy stance on asset purchases and short term rates, and how aggressively lenders compete for volume across different loan products.
During 2021, mortgage rates stayed relatively low partly because the Fed was buying large volumes of bonds to cushion the economy against pandemic fallout. That changed starting in November 2021, when the central bank began tapering those purchases, phasing them out entirely by March 2022. From there, the Fed moved aggressively, raising the federal funds rate by a combined 5.25 percentage points over 16 months through 2022 and 2023 in an effort to tame the worst inflation in decades.
It's worth being precise about the mechanism here: the fed funds rate doesn't set mortgage rates directly, and the two can occasionally diverge in direction. But a hike of that speed and scale inevitably pushes borrowing costs higher across the economy, and mortgage rates were no exception during that stretch. The Fed then held its benchmark rate at the peak for close to 14 months starting in July 2023, before cutting it by half a point last September and following with quarter point reductions in November and December.
This year has been a different story entirely. The Fed has left rates unchanged through five meetings so far, and policymakers aren't expected to move again until September at the earliest. The central bank's quarterly projections, released in mid June, pointed to a median forecast of two quarter point cuts before year end, with the next update due September 17. That's a forecast, not a commitment, and given how often those projections shift meeting to meeting, borrowers waiting for lower rates should treat it as a loose guide rather than a guarantee.
What This Means for Anyone Shopping a Loan Right Now
The practical takeaway is that today's 30 year rate of 6.89% sits in a middle zone: better than the 7.15% spike from six weeks ago and nowhere near the 8.01% peak from 2023, but nowhere close to the 5.89% low from last fall either. Anyone timing a purchase around a rate drop is essentially betting on a Fed cutting cycle that officials themselves describe only in probabilistic terms.
Because rates differ meaningfully by lender for the exact same borrower profile, the single highest leverage move available to most shoppers is simply getting multiple quotes rather than assuming the advertised national average applies to their situation. Credit score, down payment size, loan type and even the lender's current appetite for volume all shift the number a borrower is actually offered, sometimes by a quarter point or more, which on a loan of typical size translates into real monthly dollars over the life of the loan.