Mortgage Rates Today, Dec. 19, 2024: Mortgage Rates Soar on Fed News
The average 30-year fixed rate mortgage is 7.05% today, an increase of 0.21% since yesterday. The 15-year fixed mortgage rate stands at 6.05%, up by 0.2%. The 30-year FHA mortgage now averages 6.31%, having risen by 0.23. Meanwhile, the 30-year jumbo mortgage rate is 7.42%, reflecting an increase of 0.2%.
In brief
Mortgage rates jumped sharply yesterday following various Federal Reserve events during the early afternoon. According to Mortgage News Daily's archives, they ended the day at their highest point in the last 30 days and well above 7% for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage.
There was little reaction to the afternoon's cut to general interest rates. That's because it was widely expected and already priced into mortgage rates.
The damage was done by the quarterly summary of economic projections. That showed that members of the Fed's rate-setting committee now anticipate only two further cuts through the whole of 2025. That's way fewer than markets were expecting only recently.
In his news conference, Fed Chair Jerome Powell maintained the summary's downbeat tone, giving investors no excuse to find optimism where there was none.
Regular readers will have known that today's bad news was somewhere between a possibility and a likelihood. But even we were surprised by just how savage the reaction in markets was.
It would be no shock if the current gloom were to overshadow the rest of this week's economic reports. It may be hard for investors to get excited by slightly better- or worse-than-expected data when they are in their current mood.
Mortgage Rate Trends: Past 90 Days
Purchase Rates
| Loan Type | Rate | APR | Daily Change | Monthly Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30-Year Fixed | 7.05% | 7.09% | +0.21% | +0.15% |
| 15-Year Fixed | 6.05% | 6.11% | +0.2% | +0.09% |
| 30-Year Fixed FHA | 6.31% | 7.14% | +0.23% | +0.06% |
| 30-Year Fixed VA | 6.34% | 6.5% | +0.19% | +0.15% |
| 30-Year Fixed USDA | 6.24% | 6.39% | +0.02% | +0.04% |
| 30-Year Fixed Jumbo | 7.42% | 7.45% | +0.2% | +0.08% |
| 5/6 Year ARM | 6.85% | 6.89% | +0.12% | +0.16% |
Refinance Rates
| Loan Type | Rate | APR | Daily Change | Monthly Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30-Year Fixed | 7.14% | 7.17% | +0.21% | +0.23% |
| 15-Year Fixed | 6.04% | 6.1% | +0.2% | +0.22% |
| 30-Year Fixed FHA | 6.29% | 7.12% | +0.22% | +0.06% |
| 30-Year Fixed VA | 6.34% | 6.49% | +0.17% | +0.13% |
| 5/6 Year ARM | 6.88% | 6.92% | +0.12% | +0.18% |
Coming up
Mortgage rates today
As we just explained, we may see little reaction to economic reports today and tomorrow. Still, a couple of them might raise some interest, so we'll still cover them.
This morning, we're due the final revision of gross domestic product (GDP) data for the third quarter. And markets are expecting the new reading to be slightly higher than the last one: 2.9% growth compared to 2.8%, says MarketWatch.
That should be fine if it comes in as forecast because markets are expecting it and have priced it in. However, a higher-than-expected figure could push mortgage rates upward while a lower-than-expected one could drag them downward.
Tomorrow
The same lower-is-better-than-higher rule applies to tomorrow's important report. That's the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, which is the Fed's favorite gauge of inflation.
These price indexes come with four main components. Two cover the reporting month (November) and the other two are year-over-year figures (Dec. 1, 2023 - Nov. 30, 2024).
Each of these periods comes in two flavors. The first is the straight index, which measures all prices in the survey. And the second is the "core" index, which is the straight index after food and energy prices have been stripped out. Economists argue that those two categories are "noisy" (volatile) and excluding them reveals the underlying trend.
Here's what markets are expecting for those four components tomorrow:
→ November PCE index — 0.2%, unchanged since October
→ YOY PCE index — 2.5%, up from October's 2.3%
→ November core PCE index — 0.2%, down from October's 0.3%
→ YOY core PCE index — 2.9%, up from October's 2.8%
Remember, we'd like to see as many lower-than-expected figures as possible to stand a decent chance of mortgage rates falling.
