Posted on: Friday, June 17, 2005

30-year mortgage rates rise to 5.63%

By Martin Crutsinger
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Rates on 30-year mortgages rose last week for the first time in five weeks, according to a nationwide survey.

Mortgage giant Freddie Mac said yesterday its weekly survey showed that rates on 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages averaged 5.63 percent, up from 5.56 percent last week.

It marked the first increase in five weeks and only the second gain in the past 11 weeks.

The decline in mortgage rates over the past two months has helped push sales of both new and existing homes to record levels in April and provided support for a boom in housing construction.

Despite the fact that the Federal Reserve has been raising short-term interest rates for a year, long-term rates, including mortgage rates, have been falling for much of this year, providing support for the red-hot housing market.

Frank Nothaft, chief economist at Freddie Mac, noted that the low mortgage rates pushed applications for mortgages to purchase homes last week up to the highest level on record, according to a Mortgage Bankers Association survey.

"Although the 30-year mortgage rate ticked up this week, which wasn't completely unexpected, it is still below last year's annual average and well below where it was at this time last year," Nothaft said.

For 15-year, fixed-rate mortgages, a popular option for refinancing, rates rose to 5.22 percent, up from 5.14 percent last week.

Rates on one-year adjustable rate mortgages rose to 4.25 percent, up from 4.21 percent last week.

For five-year hybrid adjustable rate mortgages, rates rose to 5.10 percent, up from 5.01 percent last week.

The nationwide averages for mortgage rates do not include add-on fees known as points. The one-year ARM had an average fee of 0.7 point and the other three mortgage categories carried fees of 0.5 point.

A year ago, 30-year mortgages averaged 6.32 percent, 15-year mortgages were at 5.70 percent and one-year ARMs averaged 4.13 percent. Freddie Mac does not have historical data on the five-year ARM, which it began tracking this year.

Meanwhile, Fannie Mae, the largest U.S. mortgage company, yesterday forecast that average fixed-mortgage rates this year will fall to a record and remain at the same level in 2006 as inflation stays tame.

The average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage probably will drop to 5.64 percent this year from 5.84 percent in 2004, Fannie Mae chief economist David Berson said. That would be the lowest annual average ever recorded, putting it at levels not seen since at least the Kennedy administration in the early 1960s.