February 27, 2026
Maybe some good news for those of you in the market to buy a home???? Mortgage rates just hit a low we haven’t seen in more than three years.
Today Freddie Mac said the rate for the most popular 30-year fixed mortgage was 5.98%. This is the first time mortgage rates have dropped below 6% since September of 2022. That rate has been slowly dropping since December. Freddie Mac says it arrived at today’s mortgage rate by averaging all loan rates offered nationwide over the last week.
In case you were wondering — at this time last year – the 30-year fixed rate was 6.76%. They peaked at 7.8% in October 2023. Why did this happen? Mostly because treasury yields have been falling since early February because of the softening economy and the slow down in the jobs market.
Freddie Mac says because today’s rate is now below that 6% threshold – along with improving availability of the inventory of homes on the market – it may pull some hesitant homebuyers off the sidelines.
But as I reported in this video – those potential homebuyers were absolutely sitting it out in January. Home sales last month plummeted down 8.4%. But perhaps the biggest problem isn’t inventory and mortgage rates – it’s also home prices – which have increased for 31 consecutive months year over year. According to the national association of realtors the median existing home price for the entire country is $396,800. Of course the highest existing home price was in the west where the median price was $600,400 and the least expensive existing homes were in the Midwest where the median price was $295,400. You can see all the prices for all regions on the screen.
Read the report from Freddie Mac here.
NAR report for January here.
