The Long ViewNo. 34
Half a century of mortgage rates
What Freddie Mac's weekly survey says about today's borrowing costs for homebuyers.
Freddie Mac has surveyed lenders about the rate on 30-year fixed mortgages every week since 1971. For households, few financial numbers matter more: on a typical home loan, a one-percentage-point change in the rate can shift the monthly payment by hundreds of dollars.
Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED). Shaded areas indicate U.S. recessions as dated by the NBER.
Where it stands
As of October 8, 2026, the average 30-year mortgage rate stood at 7.40%. Since April 1971, it has averaged 7.68%, with a median of 7.22%. Today's reading is higher than 52% of all observations in that span. The high point was 18.63% in October 1981; the low was 2.65% in January 2021.
For comparison, it was 2.99% five years ago, 3.42% ten years ago, and 6.30% twenty years ago. The last time it was this high was November 2023.
Average by decade
| 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8.90% | 12.71% | 8.12% | 6.29% | 4.09% | 5.39% |
The history
Mortgage rates peaked above 18% in October 1981 and then fell, with interruptions, for four decades to a record low below 3% in early 2021. The climb that followed — to about 7% by late 2022 — was one of the fastest in the survey's history. It left many existing homeowners with loans far below prevailing rates, a lock-in effect that has kept many of them from moving.
Why it matters
Mortgage rates generally follow the 10-year Treasury yield, plus a spread that compensates lenders and investors for prepayment and credit risk. When that spread widens, as it did in 2022 and 2023, mortgage rates can stay high even when Treasury yields ease.
Diurna briefs are compiled from official and exchange data by our publishing system using fixed editorial rules; they describe market moves and do not speculate about causes. This is not investment advice. How we produce the Daily Brief.