Mortgage rates have mostly risen this year, the AP reports
The second consecutive weekly decline in the benchmark 30-year fixed mortgage rate brought another shift in borrowing costs. Freddie Mac’s average stood at 6.65% on Thursday, down from 6.67% one week earlier but above the 6.58% average recorded a year ago.
The 30-year rate remains the benchmark product in Freddie Mac’s weekly rate report. The latest Freddie Mac data shows that the recent easing has not reversed the broader pattern of elevated rates this year.
Freddie Mac also reported a decline in the average 15-year fixed mortgage rate, which is often used by borrowers refinancing home loans. That rate fell to 5.95% from 5.96% last week, while its average was 5.69% a year earlier.
Both major fixed-rate products remain more expensive than they were at the same point last year. The recent pullback follows a period in which mortgage rates had mostly risen, limiting prospective homebuyers’ purchasing power, the AP reported.
Higher borrowing costs have been one factor in sluggish U.S. home sales this year, according to AP reporting. Mortgage rates reflect several influences, including inflation, broader policy rate decisions from the Federal Reserve and bond-market expectations about the economy. These factors affect the yields that lenders consider when pricing home loans.
Mortgage rates generally follow the trajectory of the 10-year Treasury yield. The yield was 4.71% on Aug. 20, 2026, in vintage data published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Lenders use the 10-year Treasury yield as a guide in pricing mortgages. Changes in inflation, Federal Reserve policy and investor expectations can therefore feed into home-loan rates even when the weekly average moves in the opposite direction.
The average rates declined for a second week, but the cost of financing a home remained higher than a year earlier. For prospective buyers, this week’s reduction leaves borrowing costs above where they were 12 months ago.