For The Fifth Week In A Row - Mortgage Rates Hit A New All Time Low

The 30 year rate fell from 4.42 to 4.36 this week. This is the 6th week in a row where rates have fallen. But more importantly this is the 5th week where we have hit a new all time low. In that time the 30 year rate has dropped from 4.57 to 4.36. Considering that 4.57 was an all time low this is a decent drop.

The 15 year dropped from 3.90 to 3.86. The 5 year arm stayed even at 3.56 and the 1 year arm dropped from 3.53 to 3.52. These were all time lows for the respective mortgage products. Below are rates from the weeks from Jul 29, 2010 to Aug 26, 2010

Aug 26, 2010
30-fixed 4.36 15-fixed 3.86 5 ARM 3.56 1 ARM 3.52

Aug 19, 2010
30-fixed 4.42 15-fixed 3.90 5 ARM 3.56 1 ARM 3.53

Aug 12, 2010
30-fixed 4.44 15-fixed 3.92 5 ARM 3.56 1 ARM 3.53

Aug 05, 2010
30-fixed 4.49 15-fixed 3.95 5 ARM 3.63 1 ARM 3.55

Jul 29, 2010
30-fixed 4.54 15-fixed 4.00 5 ARM 3.76 1 ARM 3.64

Feb 11, 2010
30-fixed 4.97 15-fixed 4.34 5 ARM 4.19 1 ARM 4.33

So while its interesting to look at mortgage rates at the end of the day mortgage payments is what really matters to most of us. We took today's rates and translated them into a payment on a 200k loan. We also did the same thing with rates from August, 12 2010 and rates from February, 11 2010.

Aug 26
30-year $996.8
15-year $1465.38
5-year ARM $904.8
1-year ARM $900.32

Aug 12
30-year $1006.25
15-year $1471.37
5-year ARM $904.8
1-year ARM $901.44

Feb 11
30-year $1069.97
15-year $1513.68
5-year ARM $976.86
1-year ARM $993.26

Since we have been tracking these numbers this is the first time a 30 year loan for a 200k house has dropped below $1000. It almost reminds me of those misleading ads from shady mortgage brokers I used to see a few years back. So compared to February 11th (6 months ago) a month payment is down $72.17 a month for a drop of 6.83 percent a fairly substantial drop for 6 months.

So the question of course is where are mortgage rates going? Are they going to continue to plummet to even lower depths or return to normal levels? For now it looks like the government is going to do whatever it can to keep mortgage rates as low as possible, since the economy is being dragged down by a weak housing market. For the time being it's doubtful that mortgage rates are going to rise. As long as the economy remains weak and the government remains interested we will see incredibly low mortgage rates and might see them fall a little further. It's hard to know how much they could fall since we are in uncharted territory. But once the economy recovers we will see rates rise, perhaps rapidly, rates are at an unnaturally low level and they will not stay this low forever.

By: Dane Smith

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Ki is a realtor working in Austin Texas. His business offers a searchable database of Austin Texas real estate. His site also provides a mortgage rate widget and a graph showing historical mortgage rates as well statistics on Austin Texas real estate.