Mortgage Rates Climb for Seventh Straight Week to Highest Level in a Year

The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage rose to 7.40% this week, its seventh consecutive weekly increase and its highest level in roughly a year, according to data released by Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey.

That is up from 7.28% a week earlier and from 6.30% at this time last year, when rates had been easing. The average 15-year fixed rate, popular among homeowners refinancing or buying with larger down payments, climbed to 6.73% from 6.60%, and is now more than a full percentage point above its level a year ago. The seven-week run of increases has unfolded largely since early autumn, when the 30-year rate first crossed 7% for the first time since January 2025, according to reporting on the Freddie Mac data.

Bond-market pressure behind the climb

Mortgage rates track closely with yields on the 10-year Treasury note, which have risen sharply in recent weeks amid a broader bond-market selloff. Joel Berner, a senior economist at Realtor.com, attributed the pressure to a mix of forces: elevated inflation expectations, the Treasury selloff itself, and concerns about the scale of federal borrowing needed to finance widening deficits, in comments included in a separate wire account of the survey. Each of those pushes longer-term yields higher, and mortgage rates — which lenders price off those yields rather than off the Federal Reserve's short-term policy rate directly — have followed closely behind.

The increase comes at an awkward moment for the housing market, which typically slows heading into the winter months regardless of rates. Higher borrowing costs compound that seasonal slowdown by pricing more prospective buyers out of the market altogether: on a typical mortgage, a move of more than a full percentage point over a year adds meaningfully to a buyer's monthly payment, a difference that can determine whether a household qualifies for a loan at all under standard debt-to-income lending rules used by most lenders.

Would-be sellers face a parallel problem. Many homeowners who bought or refinanced during the low-rate years of 2020 and 2021 remain reluctant to list their homes and give up mortgages priced several points below current rates, a dynamic economists have labeled the "lock-in effect." That reluctance has kept the inventory of homes for sale tighter than it would otherwise be even as buyer demand cools, propping up prices in many markets despite weakening affordability on paper.

Forecasters are divided on how long the current run of increases will last. Some bond strategists have projected that Treasury yields will ease gradually over the coming months as inflation cools, which would eventually pull mortgage rates down with them. Others have warned that persistent federal borrowing needs could keep long-term yields elevated longer than markets currently expect, meaning this week's reading may not represent a peak.

For now, Freddie Mac's weekly survey — drawn from a national sample of mortgage applications and widely used across the industry as the reference rate for pricing new loans — gives the clearest available signal of where borrowing costs stand heading into the final stretch of the year: seven straight weeks of increases, with no sign yet that the climb has broken.