The average rates on 30-year and 15-year fixed-rate mortgages ticked up slightly over the past week, according to Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey.
Whenever a mortgage rate increases – even just 0.02 percentage points – it can have a significant impact on your monthly payment and the interest you pay over the life of a 30-year fixed-rate (the most popular type of mortgage, according to the National Association of Realtors).
“Mortgage rates have been shifting within a narrow ten-basis point range over the last month,” Freddie Mac noted Thursday.
“This rate stability is a positive sign for both buyers and sellers, as it helps provide greater certainty in the housing markets.”
How does this week’s rate increase affect monthly mortgage payments?
Whenever a mortgage rate increases even just 0.02 percentage points, it can have a significant impact on your monthly mortgage payment and the interest you pay over the life of a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage.
For example, the median home price from April to June 2025 was $410,800, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Here’s what the difference in monthly payments and total interest paid would look like for the median home price with a 3.5% down payment and using rates of 6.24% and 6.26%:
Where will home loan interest rates go from here?
Looking ahead to the rest of the year, prospective homebuyers may be wondering where rates are headed. There’s been some chatter that the Federal Reserve may lower the federal funds rate in December. If that happens, it might bring mortgage rates down since the Fed rate has an indirect impact on mortgage rates.
That being said, significantly lower mortgage rates may not happen by the end of the year, says Steve Hill, a broker associate at SBC Lending with more than 20 years of experience in the financial industry.
“Through the end of the year, I see rates largely [staying] flat,” Hill told The Independent. “I know buyers are waiting for rates to be 0.25 [percentage points] lower in December…but with the last few Fed meetings, rates have increased after the announcement, which is a difficult message for borrowers to digest because it’s counter-intuitive.”
So, borrowers waiting for rates to go down may be disappointed if they wait until December to buy. But is buying a home right now a good choice?
“One hundred percent — that’s the message I try to convey to homebuyers,” Hill says. “In January rates were 7.25%, and today, they’re a full point lower, and by shopping around, you can get rates in the 5.875% range.”