Mortgages & Rates
Mortgage rate movements, refinancing, loan types, rate locks, lender comparisons, and how interest rates affect housing affordability.
Latest in Mortgages & Rates
Fannie Mae opened VantageScore 4.0 to every approved lender
Mortgage lenders that sell loans to Fannie Mae no longer need written permission to use VantageScore 4.0, and as of October 1 the pricing for...
FHA will accept newer credit score models on case numbers from January 1
Loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration will be scored on a wider menu of credit models next year. For case numbers assigned on or...
Freddie Mac retires its standalone energy-efficiency mortgage for applications received January 25 or later
Freddie Mac is retiring GreenCHOICE, the standalone mortgage it created to finance energy-efficiency improvements. The cutoff is a lender’s application received date of January 25,...
Freddie Mac’s average 30-year mortgage rate held unchanged in the week of October 15
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....
HUD under President Trump says FHA home loans to non-permanent residents have all but disappeared since the May 2025 ban
FHA purchase loans to non-permanent residents have nearly vanished since HUD cut them out of the program, according to figures the agency released on Oct....
Fannie Mae dropped three limits on attorney opinion letters used instead of title insurance
An attorney’s written opinion can stand in for a title insurance policy on a mortgage that Fannie Mae buys, and since October 7 three restrictions...
Fannie Mae issued new rules for pension income that starts after closing
Fannie Mae told mortgage lenders on October 7 how to document pension, annuity and retirement income that has not started paying by the time a...
A conforming mortgage still stops at $832,750 in most of the country
The Federal Housing Finance Agency still lists $832,750 as the largest one-unit mortgage that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can buy in most of the...
Fannie Mae’s sale of about 1,217 deeply delinquent loans takes bids October 27, and buyers must offer homeowners options that can include principal forgiveness before foreclosing, except on vacant or condemned properties
Fannie Mae is taking bids until October 27 on about 1,217 deeply delinquent mortgages carrying $259.9 million in unpaid principal, and whoever wins them takes...
ARMs hit their biggest share of rate locks in nearly four years, ICE says
Adjustable-rate mortgages made up more than 11 percent of mortgage rate locks in the latest data from Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the largest share in nearly...
A quarter-point Fed rate increase at the Oct. 27-28 meeting would add about $9 a month to the median home equity line payment, ICE estimates
A quarter-point Federal Reserve rate increase at the Oct. 27-28 meeting would add about $9 a month to the payment on the median home equity...
People told their Social Security or account numbers may have been exposed in the SitusAMC breach have until Nov. 6 to file a settlement claim
A real estate finance services company says files taken from its systems in November 2025 may have held Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers and...
People in the McLean Mortgage data breach settlement can claim $45 in cash and credit monitoring, with claims due December 10
People caught up in the October 2024 McLean Mortgage Corporation data breach can file for a flat $45 payment or for reimbursement of documented losses,...
United Wholesale Mortgage will keep using FICO scores on every broker-channel credit pull, FICO said October 6, and participating lenders get FICO 10T at no added fee from FICO
United Wholesale Mortgage, which FICO describes as the nation’s number one mortgage lender, will keep using FICO Scores on all credit pulls across its broker...
Fannie Mae’s sale of 919 seriously delinquent home loans is expected to close by November 4, and buyers must offer homeowners options that can include principal forgiveness before foreclosing, except on vacant or condemned properties
The part of Fannie Mae’s latest loan sale that matters most to borrowers is a condition on the buyer, not the price. Before starting a...
Freddie Mac sold 1,968 seriously delinquent mortgages with about $428 million in unpaid balances to investors, with the sales set to settle in December
Freddie Mac has sold 1,968 seriously delinquent mortgages whose borrowers were between 15 and 21 months behind on average, depending on the pool, in an...
Fed officials said mortgage rates rose more than 10-year Treasury yields and home-purchase borrowing stayed depressed, minutes released October 7 show
Residential mortgage rates rose a bit more than 10-year Treasury yields, and borrowing for home purchases remained depressed, according to minutes of the Federal Reserve’s...
Mortgage refinance applications fell 8 percent in a week to their lowest level since 2025, and the MBA says very few homeowners have an incentive to refinance
“Very few homeowners have an incentive to refinance at these rates,” Joel Kan, deputy chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association, said in the group’s...
The average 30-year mortgage rate in the Mortgage Bankers Association survey hit 7.49 percent, its highest in almost three years, as applications fell
The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage reached 7.49 percent in the week ending October 2, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s weekly survey,...
FHA will accept FICO Score 10T, which FICO says counts rental payments and trended credit data, on forward mortgages with case numbers assigned from January 1, 2027
The Federal Housing Administration will accept FICO Score 10T on mortgages whose case numbers are assigned on or after January 1, 2027. FICO announced on...