Today's Mortgage Rates for Refinance and Purchase

Mortgage rates constantly fluctuate. I recommend shopping around for a mortgage that fits your budget and has the right mix of interest rate and fees. Locking your rate is a great idea if you know the time frame that you will close the loan. Most loan offers have a 30-day lock period. If you pass the time of the lock, you may need to pay additional fees.

Mortgage rates and fees for HARP loans, will be similar to rates on other conventional loans. However, due to the fact that HARP loans are offered by fewer lenders, you can expect a premium on the price. Many people are restricted to going to their original lender/servicer, due to a high DTI. If that is the case the room for negotiating is low. I recommend that you shop around for the best rate. The automated underwriting systems for new lenders will be available in March 2012.

I doubt you will qualify for a reasonable loan when you have, essentially, no credit history. Focus your energy on building your credit history.

I do not have a solution, but I do have an explanation. When Congress wrote the 401(k) law, it presented its rules as guidelines or boundaries that employers were free to interpret tightly. For example, some employers choose to not allow loans against an employee's current balance, or allow any hardship distributions under any circumstances. I realize this is not helpful, but it explains the discrepancy between plans you noticed.

Could be rates from the same lender?

Rates are bound to increase sometime and rates now are already at historical lows. When you look at 04 and 05, mortgage rates were at 6-7%. I would refinance now if you still can.

Ah, macro-economics. There are probably a dozen ways to explain why interest rates are so low today, and a dozen factors that go into the market settling on the rates we see. I have one simple explanation I use to understand interest rates, and I encourage readers to share their own.

I look at mortgage interest rates as a function and outcome of supply and demand. As I write these words in late 2010, the world's industries and consumers are in a recession, and there is little demand for money. Consumers are hesitant to borrow, and businesses large and small are not borrowing a large amount of money to build their businesses. Investors must compete to gain the attention of people willing to borrow. As a result, borrowers can demand ever-lower interest rates.

Contrast this with boom times. When captains of industry are optimistic and are investing in factories and equipment, and consumers are fully employed and see their paychecks growing in size, both industry and consumers borrow money. In that situation, lenders can demand ever higher interest rates because if one potential borrower doesn't take the loan, the next one will.

Of course, there are other forces at work. Nations manipulate interest rates and the value of their currency. Governments overspend, print more money and drive up inflation. Investors react to the events of the day. The US Federal Reserve can manipulate the interest rate by buying U.S. government debt. And so on.

An adequate but incomplete explanation. There is a great deal of debate whether national monetary policy has much of an effect on interest rates. Employment rate usually inversely correlates with interest rates, which suggests there may be causation.

Where will mortgage interest rates be in six months?

Depends on the speed of the economic recovery and the employment picture. There is also an unprecedented number of foreclosures that have yet to work their way through the courts and private foreclosure systems, and the longer it takes to reach the bottom in housing prices the longer it will take for the new-housing industry, a significant employment engine, to recover.

Mortgage rates in the past 2 days have increased by close to 20 basis points. It's widely expected that mortgage rates will at some point increase from the 3-4% that we're at now. People who are still in the market for a refinance should monitor rates closely.