The average 30-year fixed rate mortgage was 6.28% yesterday, a decrease of 0.04% since the day before. The 15-year fixed mortgage rate stood at 5.4%, down by 0.02%. The 30-year FHA mortgage averaged 5.57% yesterday, having risen by 0.02. Meanwhile, the 30-year jumbo mortgage rate was 6.69%, reflecting no change.
The bigger picture
Government reopening
Following a House vote and the president's signature yesterday evening, the government will reopen immediately. We'll have to wait to see if and how bond markets (and so mortgage rates) will react today to this development.
Yesterday
Yesterday, we feared that mortgage rates might rise that day as the prospects for ending the 42-day government shutdown looked brighter. It's just as well we added a caveat ("But other forces could confound that prediction.") because those rates actually fell modestly on Wednesday.
The immediate cause of yesterday's fall just might have been the release on Tuesday of new data from ADP's National Employment Report (NER) Pulse. "For the four weeks ending Oct. 25, 2025, private employers shed an average of 11,250 jobs a week, suggesting that the labor market struggled to produce jobs consistently during the second half of the month," said ADP.
We're accustomed to job creation, so job destruction on that scale is pretty scary. However, it's not wholly surprising. ADP monitors only the private sector, but that, too, has been affected by the government shutdown.
We've recently reported on layoffs by government contractors and other businesses that rely on the custom of furloughed federal employees, including stores and restaurants in Washington, D.C., and near military bases nationwide.
Falling payrolls in this context look likely to be short-term and much less worrying than they might be in other circumstances.
The Fed and the Treasury
On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal ran an article under the headline, "The Fed Is Increasingly Torn Over a December Rate Cut."
"Officials are fractured over which poses the greater threat — persistent inflation or a sluggish labor market — and even a resumption of official economic data may not bridge the differences," said The Journal. "The rupture has complicated what looked like a workable plan less than two months ago, though investors think a rate cut at the Fed’s next meeting is still more likely than not."
The Journal is right that investors still expect a rate cut when the Federal Reserve next updates rate policy on Dec. 10. The CME FedWatch tool last night put the odds at 60.1% while 39.9% anticipate no change.
However, those odds worsened considerably yesterday. On Tuesday, the tool put the chances of a cut at 66.9%.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury had a difficult day yesterday when it auctioned $42 billion of 10-year Treasury notes. The sale was a success in the end, but indirect bidders took a smaller share than they normally do, something MarketWatch said was "typically regarded as signs of weak demand." Stand by for a $25 billion sale of 30-year bonds scheduled for later today.
Another mystery
A deteriorating job market is something that would typically move mortgage rates lower, not least because it suggests that the Fed is more likely to make another cut to general interest rates imminently.
However, the ADP report had an obvious reason. And the odds of such a cut actually dropped that day, something that would typically push mortgage rates upward. The same would usually be true of weak demand at a Treasury auction.
So, we're a little confused about why mortgage rates edged lower yesterday. Perhaps it was just down to markets dealing with even more uncertainty than they normally do.
Mortgage Rate Trends: Past 90 Days
Purchase Rates
| Loan Type | Rate | APR | Daily Change | Monthly Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30-Year Fixed | 6.28% | 6.31% | -0.04% | -0.06% |
| 15-Year Fixed | 5.4% | 5.45% | -0.02% | +0% |
| 30-Year Fixed FHA | 5.57% | 6.78% | +0.02% | -0.09% |
| 30-Year Fixed VA | 5.64% | 5.78% | -0.03% | -0.11% |
| 30-Year Fixed USDA | 5.55% | 5.69% | -0.07% | -0.2% |
| 30-Year Fixed Jumbo | 6.69% | 6.7% | +0% | +0.02% |
| 5/6 Year ARM | 6.29% | 6.33% | +0% | -0.06% |
Refinance Rates
| Loan Type | Rate | APR | Daily Change | Monthly Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30-Year Fixed | 6.39% | 6.41% | +-0% | -0.01% |
| 15-Year Fixed | 5.39% | 5.44% | -0.01% | +0.03% |
| 30-Year Fixed FHA | 5.54% | 6.76% | +0.03% | -0.06% |
| 30-Year Fixed VA | 5.67% | 5.81% | -0.02% | -0.1% |
| 5/6 Year ARM | 6.38% | 6.41% | +0.08% | +0.04% |
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 employment, inflation, tariffs, and deficit funding are especially influential at the moment.
Until the government reopens, no more official economic reports are likely to be published.
Yesterday evening, the House concurred with the Senate's bill to end the shutdown, and the president signed it into law. With an immediate reopening, we can expect the publication of official reports to slowly return to normal. However, as we wrote yesterday:
"Had the government shutdown been brief, we could have expected a flood of official economic reports on reopening. But the length of the hiatus means that it is no longer the case. Data won't have been collected — let alone compiled and prepared for publication — during the shutdown. So, delays are inevitable."
Mortgage rates today
There is just one economic report on today's MarketWatch economic calendar. It's the monthly federal budget, which is expected to shrink to a $215 billion deficit, compared with $257.5 billion the previous month.
Mortgage rates rarely respond to these reports. However, in the current environment, where government borrowing levels are particularly important to bond markets, it's possible that today's figures could have an impact.
A smaller-than-expected deficit might exert downward pressure on mortgage rates, while a larger-than-expected one could push them higher. If the forecast proves accurate, those rates might not move at all.
No economic reports are scheduled for tomorrow.
