Last Friday was a great day for mortgage rates with two major economic reports helping the bond market make some serious gains (read more). Mortgage lenders align their rates primarily with the bond market, but they’re not always looking to cut rates as much as the market on Friday afternoons suggests. If the bond market stays in good shape Monday morning there is usually a little additional improvement and that was the case today.
The average lender is only marginally better compared to last Friday, but that puts them almost perfectly in line with the December 15 lows. You would have to go back to September 12th to see anything lower.
In other words, if we see even the slightest improvement by Thursday, January 12th, we’ll officially have our lowest rates in 4 months.
The catch is that some extremely important economic data (the Consumer Price Index or “CPI”) is due out Thursday morning and mortgage lenders will definitely be waiting to see how the bond market reacts before updating interest rates for Thursday. Conclusion: We are close enough to the 4-month lows right now, but rates will either rise or fall notably on Thursday depending on the outcome of the CPI data.