30-Year Mortgage Rate

The 30-Year Mortgage Rate is Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS), a weekly national average published since April 1971. It draws on thousands of purchase applications sent to Loan Product Advisor (LPA), Freddie Mac's automated underwriting system, in all 50 states and DC.

It covers only conventional conforming fully amortizing 30-year fixed purchase loans, not government-insured loans. Borrowers put 20% down, with loan-to-value (LTV) of 75% to 80% and FICO score of 740 or more. Homes are single-family owner-occupied units in the lower 48 states or DC, and refinances are excluded. It does not measure closed loans, and it is not any borrower's obtainable rate.

Applications are collected from 12:00 AM ET Thursday through 11:59 PM ET the next Wednesday, and results are published each Thursday at 12 PM ET. When a US holiday falls on Thursday, publication moves to Wednesday of that week.

Each release includes the 15-year average, an economist comment and the archive back to 1971, and each weekly figure is final with no revisions. Markets read the level in percent with weekly and yearly change in percentage points. They use it as context for affordability, purchase activity and the 10-year Treasury yield, with no stated target.

The index has two published averages plus strict qualifying rules that decide which applications count.

• 30-year FRM average: mean rate on qualifying 30-year purchase applications from strong-credit buyers with 20% down.

• 15-year FRM average: companion weekly mean from the same national pool, added in 1991.

• Financing filters: conventional conforming fully amortizing loans with LTV of 75 to 80 and FICO of 740 or more.

• Property and loan filters: single-family owner-occupied new purchases in the lower 48 states and DC within national conforming limits.

In the week ending January 7, 2021, the 30-year average was 2.65% with 0.7 point, down from 2.67% and 3.64% a year earlier. It was the lowest since 1971, and the 15-year average was 2.16% with 0.6 point, versus 2.17% and 3.07% a year earlier.

The 5-year ARM averaged 2.75% with 0.3 point, versus 2.71% and 3.30% a year earlier, before it was dropped in November 2022. Despite a full point drop over the prior year, affordability fell because rising home prices offset lower rates, a false signal for buyers.

1. Collect: Gather all purchase loan applications sent to LPA that could lead to future home purchases.

1. Clean: Remove incomplete or faulty records, keep the most recent submission per application and drop outliers.

1. Filter: Keep only applications meeting all PMMS rules for loan type, property, down payment and credit.

1. Time window: Aggregate Thursday 12:00 AM ET through Wednesday 11:59 PM ET, keeping new applicants and past applicants only if their rate changed.

1. Average: Compute the mean of qualifying 30-year rates with equal weight for each loan and no seasonal adjustment. For example, 5 rates of 6.70%, 6.75%, 6.80%, 6.85% and 6.90% sum to 34.00 and divide by 5 to give 6.80%. Real weeks use thousands of applications.