Mortgage rates at year's lowest levels

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Mortgage interest rates were at their lowest level of the year this week. Edging ever closer to Freddie Mac's record low 4.71 percent, the average interest rate on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages (FRMs), for the week ending May 27, fell to 4.78 percent.

by Broderick Perkins
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Deadline Newsroom - Edging ever closer to Freddie Mac's record low 4.71 percent, the average interest rate on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages (FRMs), for the week ending May 27, fell to 4.78 percent.

The May 27 average rate came with an average 0.7 point and was down from 4.84 percent last week, and down from 4.91 percent a year ago, according to the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey

The record 4.71 percent posted Dec. 3, 2009 was the lowest conforming loan rate since Freddie Mac began its weekly survey in 1971.

These "low rates will help to elevate home-buyer affordability and soften the effects of the sunset of the home-buyer tax credit," said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac vice president and chief economist.

The 15-year FRM this week averaged 4.21 percent with an average 0.7 point, down from last week when it averaged 4.24 percent. The 15-year FRM has not been lower since Freddie Mac started tracking it in August 1991. A year ago at this time, the 15-year FRM averaged 4.53 percent, Freddie Mac reported.

The 5-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) averaged 3.97 percent this week, with an average 0.6 point, up from last week when it averaged 3.91 percent. A year ago, the 5-year ARM averaged 4.82 percent.

The 1-year Treasury-indexed ARM averaged an even 3.95 percent this week with an average 0.6 point, down from last week when it averaged 4 percent. The 1-year ARM has not been lower since the week ending May 27, 2004, which it averaged 3.87 percent. At this time last year, the 1-year ARM averaged 4.69 percent.

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Broderick Perkins, an award-winning consumer journalist, parlayed 30 years of old-school journalism into a digital real estate news service, the San Jose, CA-based DeadlineNews Group, including DeadlineNews.Com, a real estate news and consulting service and Web site, and the Deadline Newsroom, DeadlineNews.Com's news back shop.

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