The average 30-year fixed rate mortgage was 6.3% yesterday, unchanged since the day before. The 15-year fixed mortgage rate stood at 5.53%, down by 0.01%. The 30-year FHA mortgage averaged 5.65% yesterday, having dropped by 0.01. Meanwhile, the 30-year jumbo mortgage rate was 6.75%, reflecting no change.
The bigger picture
Yesterday morning, we wrote, "We're worried there will be upward pressure on [mortgage] rates this week." Sure enough, those rates either held steady or fell a little, depending on whose numbers you believe.
We weren't alone in being surprised when markets failed to react badly to the weekend's news from the Middle East. "Wall Street investors who spoke with MarketWatch said they were puzzled by [yesterday's benign] move," said MarketWatch yesterday afternoon.
Brent Donnelly, president of Spectra Markets, provided a possible reason for the surprise. "It is revealing that the thing that everyone expected to happen or expected ‘should’ happen is not happening," Donnelly told MarketWatch. "And thus, that usually means that everyone is trapped in the position suggested by what should happen. And when they capitulate one by one … the market goes the ‘illogical’ way for much longer than people can remain in the position."
Might today's inflation report push markets toward logicality? It could, providing it delivers some unexpected data, and there's no dramatic news out of the Middle East. But it's hard to predict the outcome of illogical plays.
Scroll on down for information about today's economic reports, including their possible impact on mortgage rates.
Mortgage Rate Trends: Past 90 Days
Purchase Rates
| Loan Type | Rate | APR | Daily Change | Monthly Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30-Year Fixed | 6.3% | 6.33% | +-0% | -0.02% |
| 15-Year Fixed | 5.53% | 5.57% | -0.01% | -0.01% |
| 30-Year Fixed FHA | 5.65% | 6.86% | -0.01% | -0.03% |
| 30-Year Fixed VA | 5.78% | 5.92% | +-0% | -0.06% |
| 30-Year Fixed USDA | 5.69% | 5.84% | -0.01% | -0.15% |
| 30-Year Fixed Jumbo | 6.75% | 6.77% | +0% | +0% |
| 5/6 Year ARM | 6.07% | 6.11% | +0.06% | +0.1% |
Refinance Rates
| Loan Type | Rate | APR | Daily Change | Monthly Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30-Year Fixed | 6.38% | 6.41% | +0.01% | +0% |
| 15-Year Fixed | 5.49% | 5.53% | +-0% | -0.01% |
| 30-Year Fixed FHA | 5.64% | 6.85% | +0% | -0.05% |
| 30-Year Fixed VA | 5.76% | 5.9% | -0.01% | -0.1% |
| 5/6 Year ARM | 6.03% | 6.07% | +0.02% | +0.06% |
What's coming up?
Although economic reports are usually the main drivers of changes to mortgage rates, they're not the only ones. The general mood in markets and economically consequential news can also affect those rates. News items concerning the war, employment, inflation, tariffs, and deficit funding are especially influential at the moment.
Comerica Bank's Preview of the Week Ahead
Here are excerpts from Comerica Bank's weekly preview, published Monday:
"Echoing last week’s CPI release, producer prices rose sharply in March as the Iran war pushed up prices of crude and refined petroleum products and transportation charges. Producer price inflation was already outpacing CPI and PCE inflation before the war, and the gap is widening. This mostly reflects the larger weight of petroleum products and other commodities in the PPI compared to the consumer basket. Even so, the longer producer prices stay high, the more they will pull up consumer prices beyond those paid at the gas pump.
"Industrial production is forecast to rise solidly in the March report on stronger manufacturing and mining output. Utilities production likely fell as the weather turned milder. U.S. crude oil production trended lower in March but will soon increase if high prices are sustained."
Comerica's predictions often differ from market expectations, which are based on a consensus of forecasts from a wider pool of economists and analysts.
Mortgage rates today
There are two economic reports on today's MarketWatch economic calendar. By far the more important is the March producer price index (PPI).
PPIs measure changes in prices through the wholesale phase of the supply change, at factory gates, in warehouses and distribution hubs. So, what happens there often turns up later in consumer price indices (CPIs).
There are four headline figures for each CPI, but we have market expectations only for the two relating to the reporting month (not year-over-year (YOY) figures, which cover Apr. 1, 2025, to Mar. 31, 2026). One March figure is the straight PPI, which measures price changes in all items in the survey.
The other is "core" PPI, which excludes food and energy prices. Given how sharply gas prices rose in March, core PPI is likely to be much lower than actual PPI.
Here are this morning's four headline figures, including market expectations for the March-only ones:
- March PPI — Markets expect all prices to have risen by 1.1% that month, much more quickly than February's 0.7%
- March core PPI — Markets expect core prices to have risen by 0.4% that month, more slowly than February's 0.5%
- YOY PPI — 3.4% in February. No expectations
- YOY core PPI — 3.5% in February. No expectations
With inflation reports, mortgage rates almost always fall on lower-than-expected figures and rise on higher-than-expected ones.
Today's other report is the March small business optimism index from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB). Again, no market expectations have been published, but the index stood at 98.8 in February.
Mortgage rates typically rise when important reports deliver better-than-expected economic news, and fall when that news is worse than expected. Outcomes close to expectations tend not to affect mortgage rates.
