15-Year Mortgage Rate

The 15-year average is the 15-year leg of the Primary Mortgage Market Survey. It tracks a fixed-rate loan whose rate stays fixed for the full term. Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation created by Congress in 1970, publishes this weekly survey for conventional conforming loans. The survey began in April 1971 for the 30-year loan, with the 15-year leg added in 1991.

These are prime home-purchase loans, not government-backed ones. The model borrower buys a single-family 1-unit home to live in, puts 20% down, and holds a FICO score of 740 or more. The figure shows prime borrowing costs, not an offer, a closing rate, or Federal Reserve policy.

Freddie Mac publishes PMMS each Thursday at 12pm ET, or Wednesday when Thursday is a US holiday. Each release covers applications from Thursday 12am ET through Wednesday 11:59pm ET, counting only the latest submission per application. It shows the national 15-year average, with no state split, plus the 30-year average, prior-week and year-ago values, and a Chief Economist comment. Each release is final with no routine revisions, and history runs back to January 2005 on the current method.

The 15-year rate has no weighted parts; 5 elements shape its reading.

• 15-year fixed-rate contract rate: the rate quoted at application on qualifying prime 15-year purchase loans.
• Borrower-profile filters: rules that hold loan quality constant across the weekly sample.
• Current economic conditions: broad economy-wide force behind the level of quoted rates.
• Lender risk appetite and overhead costs: supply-side forces from lenders pricing risk and cost.
• Borrower credit profiles: demand-side force, fixed at excellent credit by the filter.

For January 7, 2021, the 15-year rate averaged 2.16% with 0.6 point, down from 2.17% and 3.07% a year earlier. The 30-year rate averaged 2.65% with 0.7 point, a record low since 1971, down from 2.67% and 3.64% a year earlier. The 5-year ARM, an adjustable-rate mortgage, averaged 2.75% with 0.3 point, up from 2.71% and 3.30% a year earlier. Chief Economist Sam Khater said low rates were offset by rising home prices, so affordability had decreased.

1. Collect: gather thousands of purchase applications sent to Loan Product Advisor, Freddie Mac's automated underwriting system, from lenders in all 50 states plus DC. Lenders include credit unions, commercial banks, and mortgage companies.
2. Clean: remove bad records that are irrelevant, corrupted, wrongly formatted, or incomplete.
3. Deduplicate: keep only the latest submission per application, dropping outliers.
4. Filter: keep only fully amortizing fixed-rate purchase loans for single-family 1-unit homes the owner lives in. They must be conventional conforming loans, with loan-to-value of 75 to 80 and FICO of 740 or more. Property must sit in the lower 48 states or DC, within the national conforming limit.
5. Time-assign: place each qualifying application in its Thursday to Wednesday week. Count new applicants plus past applicants only if the rate changed.
6. Average: sum the qualifying 15-year rates and divide by their count, with no weights and no seasonal adjustment. For example, rates of 6.40%, 6.45%, 6.50%, and 6.55% sum to 25.90 and divide by 4 to give 6.475%, shown as about 6.48%.