Current Mortgage Rates - Market Recap for 11/24
Posted by Jason Evans on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 @ 04:47 PM
We will be starting to post an article as often as possible recapping what happened in the market for the current day and what impact it had on mortgage rates.
Today was a very big news day for the market at the start off what is normally a slow holiday week. Over the weekend the Treasury Department announced that it is bailing out Citigroup by investing $20 billion in the company in an effort to stabilize their balance sheets. The Treasury along with the FDIC is also guaranteeing against the "possibility of unusually large losses" for Citi on $306 billion worth of risky mortgage backed securities that they hold.
This bailout helped lead to a rally in the stock markets which many times results in a bad day for mortgage rates. While the yield on government bonds increased today as stocks also increased, the spread between Mortgage Backed Securities and comparable government bonds got tighter (good for rates) after reaching all time high levels last week (bad for rates). While the yield on bonds went up today, MBS was able to fight back and not lose much ground. One reason for this is that MBS investors see the government investing in mortgage securities as a good sign of support for future mortgage investments. What normally would have been a bad day for mortgage rates turned out to be not so bad.
The current mortgage rates held steady today on the 30 year fixed at 5.875% and the 15 year fixed at 5.50%, both with no points.
Since HomeQuest Mortgage is located in Massachusetts we will also be giving updates in our blog about what Massachusetts mortgage rates did for the day in addition to overall mortgage rates in New England. Today the mortgage rates in Massachusetts held steady at 5.875% on the 30 year fixed mortgage and 5.50% on the 15 year fixed mortgage.