Mortgages & Rates
Mortgage rate movements, refinancing, loan types, rate locks, lender comparisons, and how interest rates affect housing affordability.
Latest in Mortgages & Rates
Recasting a mortgage lowers the monthly payment without a full refinance
A homeowner sitting on a lump sum of cash and a mortgage payment they’d like smaller doesn’t have to choose between refinancing, with its new...
Homeowners can drop private mortgage insurance once their equity reaches 20%
Private mortgage insurance is one of the few recurring costs on a mortgage statement with a built-in expiration date, and federal law gives homeowners two...
Mortgage rates are pushing toward 7% after a Fed official floated a rate hike
Mortgage rates edged higher this week after Federal Reserve Governor Michael Barr said the central bank “should act decisively to raise” short-term interest rates unless...
Mortgage rates near 6.7% are keeping homeowners locked into older, cheaper loans
The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage held at 6.66% for the week ending Aug. 27, according to Freddie Mac’s weekly Primary Mortgage Market...
A reverse mortgage now gives a surviving spouse who wasn’t on the loan more protection to stay in the home
A federal rule change has widened protection for a surviving spouse left off a reverse mortgage, letting that spouse stay in the home for life...
HUD is auctioning off thousands of reverse mortgages where the owner died, and heirs who miss the deadline can lose the home
The Department of Housing and Urban Development will start reviewing bids on Sept. 1 for 5,500 federally insured reverse mortgages left behind after both the...
The typical homeowner now pays $2,354 a month once property taxes and insurance are added to the mortgage
A homeowner carrying a typical mortgage now pays $2,354 a month for housing, and only $1,843 of that payment actually covers the loan itself. The...
Homeowners can deduct the points paid to lower a mortgage rate, often all in the first year on a purchase
Points paid at a mortgage closing are a form of prepaid interest, and each point a borrower buys shaves the interest rate on the monthly...
A reverse mortgage can turn home equity into monthly cash for a homeowner 62 or older, but it shrinks what heirs inherit
A Home Equity Conversion Mortgage lets a homeowner who is at least 62 turn part of the equity in a house into cash without sending...
A veteran can refinance a VA loan to a lower rate with little paperwork through an IRRRL
The VA’s streamline refinance, formally the Interest Rate Reduction Refinance Loan, lets a veteran swap an existing VA mortgage for a lower-rate one without an...
A home-equity line can fund repairs, but it puts the house on the line if payments stop
When a roof fails or a furnace dies, a home-equity line of credit is often the cheapest large sum a homeowner can reach. It typically...
You can drop private mortgage insurance once you reach 20% home equity
Private mortgage insurance is a charge many homeowners keep paying long after federal law says it can stop. Lenders require it on conventional loans made...
Recasting a mortgage can cut the monthly payment without refinancing at today’s higher rates
A homeowner sitting on a low mortgage rate who has come into a lump sum faces an awkward problem: refinancing to lower the monthly payment...
Mortgage closing costs can run 2% to 5% of the loan, due at signing
The interest rate gets almost all the attention when a person buys or refinances a home, but a second, often-overlooked bill lands at the end...
Disabled veterans pay no funding fee on a VA home loan and can buy with nothing down
On a typical first VA loan with nothing down, the government’s funding fee runs 2.15 percent of the amount borrowed — about $6,450 on a...
Mortgage rates near 6.65% are sitting close to a one-year high, squeezing retirees who hoped to downsize
The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage stood at 6.65% in the week of August 20, 2026, down two basis points from the prior...
Americans owe $459 billion on home-equity credit lines, a variable-rate debt secured by the house
Americans now owe $459 billion on home-equity lines of credit, the highest total in more than a decade and the seventeenth consecutive quarter that the...
The 30-year mortgage is stuck near 6.7%, squeezing retirees who want to downsize
The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage sat at 6.67 percent in mid-August, barely changed from the week before and still higher than it...
A reverse mortgage can turn home equity into monthly cash, but fees and a growing loan balance eat into heirs’ inheritance
A reverse mortgage can convert years of home equity into tax-free monthly cash for owners 62 and older, and it asks for no monthly repayment...
Mortgage rates near 6.8% sit close to a one-year high, complicating a retiree’s downsizing math
The cost of borrowing to buy a home is sitting near its highest level in a year, and the timing complicates a decision many older...