Since seeing a low of 4.23% in October’s Freddie Mac report, we’d reached as high as 5.05% in the February 10th survey.

Yesterday’s results posted a rate of 4.88%, a modest .17% recovery in the past month.

What’s NOT in the survey may be more important.  Current mortgage rates seldom wait for Freddie Mac to compile their outdated survey which uses an average of rates from Monday-Wednesday.

Most respondents did not include the 100 basis point / 1 point rally in the market that occurred Wednesday and Thursday.  That pushes the actual current mortgage rates down by one of two numbers.

If you were quoted a rate of x% paying one point, you should be able to see that rate without the point today.

If you were quoted a rate of x% paying no points, you’d probably have dropped by about .25% at the start of today’s trading.

Just in time for the spring market, mortgage rates are rallying and further enhancing our already strong levels of home affordability.

In the big picture, it means that the Fed is printing about $600 billion to stimiluate the economy.  That, by definition, is inflationary.  Inflation means higher rates.  But what does that really mean?

It means about $80/month on a $200,000 loan.  It’s been a really quick rise.  The Freddie Mac PMMS results from February came in at 4.95% and the November figure was at 4.30%.

Over the course of 10 years, that’s a $12,627 increase in total mortgage cost.

Feel free to update the calculator to fit your loan amount. 

Freddie Mac’s PMMS is due out tomorrow.  Last week’s results came in at 5.05% for the 30 Year Fixed.  

Last week’s rates were dominated by an absolutely brutal Tuesday trading session that significantly influenced the survey’s results.  Since then, Wednesday and Thursday were a wash, +28bps and -25bps, respectively.  We’ve then been on a Friday-Tuesday tear of +47bps, +19bps, and +25bps. 

Current mortgage rates don’t truly exist in weekly surveys, but the PMMS is the closest thing to a national average rate that we’ll find.

Barring a huge reversal today, it wouldn’t surprise me to see the survey come in nearer to 4.875% than 5% for this week. 

The Freddie Mac survey methodology is a little outdated–having a rate quote survey that allows respondents to participate on Monday OR Tuesday OR Wednesday is moderately useless in an Internet enabled era, but I digress.

Assuming that rates come in closer to 4.875% than last week’s 5%, it’s about a $2,400 swing over the first ten years.  Here are the full numbers.