The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage held at 7.40% in the week of October 15, unchanged from the week before, Freddie Mac reported. A year earlier the same survey showed 6.27%, so borrowers are paying about 1.13 percentage points more than they did in October 2025.
Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey shows the 15-year fixed rate edged down to 6.71% from 6.73%, the only measure that moved. It is still well above the 5.52% of a year ago.
What the 7.40% measures, and what it leaves out
Freddie Mac’s rate comes from purchase applications for conventional, single-family loans within the conforming limit. The borrower profile is good or excellent credit, a 20% down payment and an owner-occupied one-unit home. Fees and points are not published, and adjustable rates are no longer reported.
That makes the 7.40% a benchmark for a well-qualified buyer, not a quote. The survey does not track home equity lines or cash-out refinances, so anyone asking whether tapping home equity makes sense at today’s rates has a reference point, but the actual price of a second loan or a refinance has to come from a lender.
The survey is published on Thursdays at noon Eastern. Each figure averages rates from applications lenders submitted from the prior Thursday through Wednesday, so a Thursday reading reflects the previous week’s lending, not conditions on the day it comes out.
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Where the reading sits against recent weeks
Freddie Mac’s weekly archive shows the 30-year average at 7.28% on October 1, then 7.40% on October 8 and 7.40% again on October 15. The 15-year average was 6.60% on October 1, 6.73% on October 8 and 6.71% on October 15.
The flat reading therefore came one week after the 30-year rate rose 12 basis points. A pause is not a decline. The rate is exactly where it stood a week earlier, and it remains above 7%.
What the higher rate costs on a monthly payment
The change from a year ago is easy to translate. Principal and interest on a $300,000 30-year fixed loan comes to roughly $2,077 a month at 7.40%, against roughly $1,851 at 6.27%. The difference is about $226 a month, or about $2,700 over a year, before taxes and insurance.
On a 15-year loan of the same size at 6.71%, principal and interest would be roughly $2,648 a month. The shorter term raises the payment by about $571 but carries a lower rate, which is the tradeoff behind the gap between the two Freddie Mac numbers.
Those figures are simple loan arithmetic, not lender quotes. They show why the survey matters beyond buyers. A homeowner whose current mortgage carries a lower rate gives it up in a refinance, and a new second loan adds a payment on top of the existing one.
How rates are weighing on home sales
The National Association of Realtors’ September report put Freddie Mac’s September average for the 30-year fixed at 6.86%, up from 6.67% in August and 6.35% a year earlier. NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun said further increases in mortgage rates in recent weeks mean fewer buyers can qualify to purchase a home.
Inman reported that Yun told reporters buyers should treat rates at or slightly above 7% as “the new normal,” and that fourth-quarter closings “will clearly be down, maybe even measurably down” if rates stay well above 7%.
Existing-home sales ran at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.99 million in September, and the NAR sales page shows sales down from a year earlier in all four regions. NAR’s Housing Affordability Index fell to 105.4 from 106.7 a year earlier.
The rate move lands on a median-priced home. NAR put the national median existing-home price at $417,500 in September. With 20% down, the loan would be about $334,000, and principal and interest at 7.40% comes to roughly $2,313 a month, against roughly $2,061 at 6.27%, a difference of about $252.
Buyers who can avoid borrowing have an edge. Cash sales were 27% of September transactions, down from 30% a year earlier, while first-time buyers made up 31% of sales. Yun told reporters that “it’s really the demand that is contracting,” Inman reported, and that inventory, at 1.60 million homes, is back to pre-pandemic conditions.
Timing matters in reading those numbers. Yun said September closings mostly reflect contracts signed in August, before the sharpest rate increases, so the sales data have yet to show the full effect of a 7.40% rate. Inman reported that only 8% of agents expect buyer traffic to rise over the next three months, down from 13% in August and 20% a year earlier.
Freddie Mac’s survey page links to a historical dataset covering rates since 1971, for anyone who wants to compare today’s 7.40% with earlier periods.
So the week of October 15 leaves borrowers where they were a week earlier: a rate above 7%, more than a point over last year, and no sign in the survey that it is easing. What that means for a household’s own equity decision depends on a lender’s quote for that specific loan.
Weighing home equity against the cost of keeping the house?
With the 30-year rate at 7.40%, borrowing against a house means taking on a payment priced more than a point above last year’s. For a homeowner on a fixed income, a new loan payment can crowd out the property tax, utility and repair bills that come with the house.
The rate story is about borrowing, so the turn here is to the cost side of owning. The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit lays out the 5 kinds of property-tax relief, along with heating, cooling and home-repair help. Its 64 pages include worksheets and an application log with a renewal calendar.
Get the home-cost relief checklist before taking on a payment at 7.40% →
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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
