It's Thursday!  That means it's time, once again, to set the record straight on today's actual mortgage rates as opposed to those suggested by almost any other news article on the topic today.  Why should you trust me as opposed to a multitude of financial journalists telling you something else?  Simply put, they're relying on Freddie Mac's weekly mortgage rate survey (which can be unavoidably stale) whereas I'm using a multitude of actual lender rate sheets to derive a highly reliable/accurate average.  Those using Freddie's numbers are relying predominantly on lender quotes from Monday and Tuesday whereas I've updated my averages in just the past hour, and for the 2nd time today!

Because the Freddie survey is always based largely on Mon/Tue numbers, the higher rates at the beginning of last week set a high baseline for this week's survey.  In fact, if we compare actual lender rate sheets from Mon/Tue only, this week's rates are indeed lower.  The issue is that last week's rates dropped noticeably by Friday.  Since then, they'd risen noticeably through this morning before moderating somewhat lower this afternoon.

The net effect is current rates that are slightly HIGHER than those seen last week.  Granted, this distinction is akin to splitting hairs for most prospective borrowers, but it's nonetheless important not to expect today's rates to be lower than Fridays.  Prospective borrowers may well infer such a thing based on other news articles and then wonder if their friendly neighborhood loan originator is shooting straight with them.  

Tomorrow continues to be a potentially important day for rates as the big jobs report is more than capable of causing volatility, for better or worse.