Buoyed by an “exceptionally strong” jobs report, the interest rate for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage rose last week, according to a new report from Zillow (Z).
Current rate borrowers were quoted an average interest rate of 3.73% on Zillow’s Mortgage Marketplace in the week that ended Tuesday, up from 3.70% last week.
"Rates remained flat for most of last week but jumped sharply after Friday's exceptionally strong jobs report, before easing back down early this week," said Erin Lantz, vice president of mortgages at Zillow.
"We expect rates to hold steady this week due to little incoming data and the official start of the European Central Bank's bond purchases," Lantz continued.
According to Zillow, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate rose Friday to 3.83% after the jobs report was released. From there, rates hovered around the same level through the weekend before dipping to the current rate on Tuesday.
The increase shown in Zillow’s report was similar to the latest Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, released Thursday.
According to Freddie Mac’s report, the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.86% for the week ended March 12, up from last week’s 3.75%. A year ago, the 30-year averaged 4.37%.
Len Kiefer, deputy chief economist at Freddie Mac, said that the jobs report also drove interest rates up as seen in its survey.
“The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose to 3.86% for this week following a strong labor market report, essentially bring rates back to where they were at the start of the year,” Kiefer said.
“The U.S. economy created 295,000 jobs in February while the unemployment rate dipped to 5.5% from 5.7% in January, both outperforming market expectations,” Kiefer added.
According to Zillow’s report, the rate for a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage is currently 2.92%, while the rate for a 5/1 adjustable-rate mortgage is 2.89%.
