- Shift Into High-Quality Stocks Could Move Market Higher
- China: Low US Interest Rates Threaten Recovery
- Drug Study Questions Effectiveness of Merck's Drugs
- Military Arms Race Dominates Dubai Air Show
- Disaster Film '2012' Drowns Rivals at Box Office
- Cramer: 5 Earnings Reports to Watch Next Week
- Hedge Fund Billionaire Paulson Reports New Citi Stake
- Cities With the Most Home Price Reductions
- This Year's Biggest Thanksgiving Leftover: Cash
- U.S. Stocks Rally for the Second Straight Week
- Dollar is Not Plunging—So 'Calm Down': Market Strategist
- Strategists Say Markets Have More Upside — But How Much?
- Hirschhorn: Risk-Averse Traders
- Roginsky: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Financial Reform
- This Year's Biggest Thanksgiving Leftover: Cash
- TV Series Inks Unique Deal For Fight
- First Time Buyers Rescue Housing: Realtors
- Dollar General Trades Higher After Its IPO
MOST SHARED
- CNBC Video: Warren Buffett & Bill Gates - Keeping American Great
- CNBC TRANSCRIPT: Warren Buffett & Bill Gates - Keeping America Great
- Analysis: APEC Nations Back Face-Saving Climate Plan
- Has Twitter's Finest Hours (Seconds) Come and Gone?
- Should China Be Forced to Free-float the Yuan?
- Microsoft's Bill Gates Praises Apple's Steve Jobs For 'Saving the Company'
- Texas Man Drives Bugatti Into Pond; Blames Bird
- Dipping Into Green Investing
Text Size 
Average interest rates on U.S. 30-year mortgages rose in the latest week to their highest since late October 2006, according to a weekly survey released by finance company Freddie Mac.
Thirty-year mortgages averaged 6.37%, up from 6.21% a week earlier and the highest since they averaged 6.40% in the week ended October 26, 2006.
Fifteen-year mortgage rates averaged 6.06%, the first time above 6% since mid-February. Last week they averaged 5.92%.
One-year adjustable rate mortgages (ARM) averaged 5.64%, up from 5.48% a week earlier.
A year ago, 30-year mortgages averaged 6.62%, 15-year mortgages 6.23% and the one-year ARM 5.61%.
"Stronger than expected consumer confidence and recent comments from members of the Federal Reserve raised some inflation concerns in the market, causing it to lower expectations of a Fed rate cut this year. This helped push mortgage rates higher this week," Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac vice president and chief economist, said in a statement.
"We expect a gradual rise in mortgage rates over the remainder of the year with sales slipping further in the second half of the year. A gradual recovery returns toward the end of 2007 with modest increases in sales and construction during 2008," Nothaft said.
In a sign that the housing market may be recovering sooner than anticipated, the Commerce Department earlier on Thursday said U.S. single-family home sales for April surged 16.2% to an annualized rate of 981,000 units. The increase was the largest since a 16.4% jump in April 1993.
On Friday, the National Association of Realtors will release U.S. April existing home sales data.
Freddie Mac said lenders charged an average of 0.4% in fees and points on 30- and 15-year mortgages, both unchanged from last week. Fees on the one-year ARM averaged 0.6%, down from 0.7%.
The "5/1" ARM, set at a fixed rate for five years and adjustable each following year, averaged 6.02%, up from 5.92% last week. Fees and points charged on the hybrid mortgage averaged 0.5%, unchanged from last week.
Freddie Mac is a mortgage finance company chartered by Congress that buys mortgages from lenders and packages them into securities to sell to investors or to hold in its own portfolio.
Print
Email
- Warren Buffett and Bill Gates spoke to Columbia students, and Buffett made the students a startling offer.
- For the chief of cable company Comcast, growth has been about making deals – generally very large deals.
- Some companies may start using insurance to shift carbon risk from their balance sheets to maybe... yours?
- The president and founder of Genesis Today wants to improve America’s health, and thinks Wal-Mart can help.
- Switzerland's privacy watchdog is taking legal action to force Google to make changes to its Street View service.
- A wealthy, distracted Texas driver crashed his million-dollar Bugatti Veyron sports car into a salt marsh, say police.
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes