17 March 2025

Prior Week Mortgage Rate Markets Comparison:

Over the past three weeks, we’ve traded mostly sideways (unchanged), which makes this the best rate run we’ve seen since October 2024 due to its longevity. Overall, data and events ended up cancelling each other out which is a good thing. We’re sitting in a much better position than we were mid-January, which you can see in the 90-day trading chart shown below.

Average Mortgage Rates Week Ending March 14, 2025 *:

* Average rates quoted as per Mortgage News Daily. As a licensed mortgage broker, I have access to nearly 200 banks and can generally offer better pricing than national rate averages.  Click here for a free customized rate quote: https://ascentmortgagepartners.com/kelly-free-rate-quote/

Here is our 90-day trading chart for 30 Year MBS:

Just a reminder the higher the yields shown on this chart, the lower the mortgage rate offer. We’re not at the best we’ve seen in this run but given the volatility in the stock markets and improvement from mid-January yields… hey, we’ll take it!

Explaining Last Week’s Market Movers: Rates Care More About PCE Inflation Data than about CPI and PPI

As we moved sideways without significant change through two key inflation reports this past week, its clear mortgage rates care more about the upcoming PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures) inflation data report than about CPI (Consumer Price Index) and PPI (Producers Price Index) both which were released last week. CPI and PPI both measured lower than expected, but why didn’t this help our rates last week? While CPI and PPI are indeed important inflation indicators and some of these measurements are used to determine the bigger PCE report, unfortunately, a few PCE-specific categories were actually higher than expected even though overall CPI/PPI numbers were lower. Moral of the story: The market is holding its breath until PCE is released in two weeks’ time.

Much of our current “better than it has been” mortgage rate pricing we’ve seen the past several weeks has been brought forth by losses in the stock market. Stock market losses will often cause traders to consider what in our industry we refer to as a “flight to safety” which include the purchase of mortgage-backed security bonds along with other “lower risk” investments. Despite plenty of news-worthy fiscal headlines last week causing more drama for stocks, we didn’t see much help from this on the mortgage rate side of things. This broke from the trend we’ve seen for much of 2025. What’s the bottom-line takeaway? As I’ve said many times before, inflation data will continue to be the largest indicator of mortgage rate movements for the weeks and months to come.

 

What I’m Watching This Week: Important Economic Reports Almost Every Day

Looking ahead, there are several calendar events that could cause volatility next week with important economic reports coming out almost every day. Wednesday afternoon’s Fed announcement is already assumed to have zero chance of a rate cut, but markets will still be curious to see how the Fed’s rate outlook has evolved since December. This is important as Fed only releases updated forecasts at 4 out of 8 meetings per year.

Quote of the Week: “The stock market is designed to transfer money from the active to the patient.” – Warren Buffet.

This highlights the power of patience, strategy and long-term thinking in building true wealth. Cheers, let’s make it an AWESOME WEEK!

 

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