30-Year Mortgage Rate

This chart plots the Freddie Mac average for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, weekly, over the last five years, from the FRED series named under the chart. It is the Primary Mortgage Market Survey — the averaged offering rate across lenders, and the most-watched single number in US housing. The page refreshes hourly from the live data and shows the current rate with the trailing 90-day change.

This is where monetary policy reaches households. Mortgages price off the long end of the Treasury curve plus a spread, so when the 10-year yield rises this rate follows, and every fraction of a point removes buyers from the market at a given home price. A rising rate is an affordability shock: sales volumes freeze, refinancing dies, and the effects ripple into builders, banks, movers and furniture makers.

A falling rate runs the same film backwards — affordability improves, locked-in sellers can finally move, and housing turnover recovers. Because housing leads so much of the consumer economy, sustained moves in this rate have historically shown up in broader activity with a lag of several quarters.

The caveats: this is a weekly survey average, not a quote — the rate any one borrower is offered depends on credit, down payment and points, and can sit well off the average. The survey reads the market with a short lag, so sharp moves in Treasury yields appear here days late. And the spread over the 10-year itself moves, so this chart and the Treasury chart do not always move in step.