Home Mortgage Interest Rate Holds at 6.98%

The average interest rate on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages held steady this week at 6.98%, unchanged from last week, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. said. That’s down from a 10-month high of 7.11% three weeks earlier but nearly a quarter percentage point higher than the 6.74% average at the end of January. Fifteen-year mortgages, a popular option for refinancing, averaged 6.58% this week, down from 6.61%. On one-year adjustable-rate mortgages, lenders were asking an average initial rate of 5.65%, down from 5.69%. The rates do not include add-on fees known as points, which averaged just under 1% of the loan amount for all three types of mortgages.