Mortgage rates tick higher for second straight week

Mortgage rates ticked higher for the second straight week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday.

Freddie Mac's latest Primary Mortgage Market Survey, released Thursday, showed the average rate on the benchmark 30-year fixed mortgage increased to 6.24% from last week's reading of 6.22%. 

The average rate on a 30-year loan was 6.78% a year ago.

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"This near-flat movement reflects a broader market pause, as sentiment surrounding the government’s reopening is tempered by lingering fiscal and economic uncertainty," said Anthony Smith, Realtor.com's senior economist. "While the 10-year Treasury yield has shown signs of stabilizing, there is still no meaningful catalyst to push rates decisively higher or lower."

The 10-year Treasury yield hovered around 4.11%. Mortgage rates closely track the 10-year note.

The average rate on the 15-year fixed mortgage fell to 5.49% from last week's reading of 5.5%.

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One year ago, the rate on the 15-year fixed note averaged 5.99%.

The main challenge for the housing market is the lagged rebound after the federal government shutdown, Smith said. President Donald Trump signed legislation on Wednesday that ended the 43-day shutdown. The stopgap measure funds the government through Jan. 30.

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"The return to normal operations will be slow, as agencies critical to the mortgage process, such as the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Housing, will be working through weeks of accumulated file backlogs, delaying transactions for days or weeks," Smith said. "For every day the government was shut down, there will likely be a comparable delay for an agency to clear its queue fully."