
One of the most common misconceptions is that when the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates, as it has done recently, that mortgage loan interest rates will also decrease. This is absolutely incorrect. The only type of loan that is affected by a decrease or an increase in the Federal Reserve’s interest rate is the Equity Line of Credit. While this type of mortgage is directly affected by what the Federal Reserve does, your everyday 30-year fixed mortgage is not.
Instead, one has to look at the 10-year bond to determine long term mortgage rates. If the interest rate on the bond goes up then mortgage interest rates will rise, if the bond goes down the interest rate on the 30 year mortgage will also go down.
How does the bond go up or down? What determines this?
If, for example, 10 investors buy the 10-year bond at an interest rate of 3.78% and then the 11th investor (usually these are large institutions) also wants to buy into the bond, that investor might have to settle for a smaller interest rate, possibly 3.77%. If another 10 investors also want to buy the same bond then at some point one of those investors might have to settle for 3.76%. As more people buy the bond, the rate decreases because at some point the next investor will have to settle for a smaller interest rate.
Already in this scenario, because more people were buying bonds than selling them, the yield on the bond slipped from 3.78% to 3.76% a loss of .02%. If the bond were to close at this rate at the end of the day, then the rate on the bond would have been lowered buy .02%.
So how does this correspond to the 30-year fixed mortgage? Well since the bond was lowered by .02% then the interest rate by which a lending institution can charge its borrowers will also be lowered because now the lending institution is borrowing money at a lower interest rate than the day before. If it were to fall another .02% the next day, the same thing would happen. The rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage would fall a little bit further. It doesn’t matter if you are seeking Oregon Home Loans, California Home Loan Mortgage Rates or a Tennessee Mortgage, when the yield on the bond goes down so does the interest rate on the 30-year.
The opposite is also true; if more people sell bonds then the bond rate rises, causing mortgage rates to also rise. Sometimes, during a trading session, so many people are either buying or selling the 10 year bond, causing it to spike in one direction or the other, that lenders will actually make adjustments to the interest rate in the middle of the day. In the morning it might have been possible to get a borrower a loan at 5.625% only to have to settle for the same loan later on in the day at a rate of 5.75%.
Generally a competent loan officer is able to lock in a rate before a mid day rate change, but sometimes it can be very difficult to accomplish, especially during months when the bond market is showing a lot of volatility, as it has done recently.
So why do investors buy and sell bonds?
If the stock market is strong and the economy is strong, institutions will want to be invested in the stock market and consequently stay away from the bond market. Especially if they have determined that they can earn more than the 3.78% annual interest rate the bond market is offering. However, if they sense that the economy is faltering, large institutions will flock to the bond market to minimize stock market loses and lock in a secure interest rate on their investments.
Recently, economists have been predicting a recession and so institutions have been investing in the bond market, bring the price of the bond down and consequently lowering 30-year mortgage rates. As a matter of fact, by historical standards interest rates are very low, under 6% for the best borrowers; rates that have not been around for several years.