Close Menu
Tuesday, September 8
Personal Finance

Mortgage Rates Today, Tuesday, September 8: Lower Amid Mixed Signals

No Comments5 Mins Read

Mortgage rates are down today as Treasury yields eased ahead of Friday’s inflation report — but don’t expect that to indicate a larger downward trend.

The average interest rate on a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage dropped to 6.65% APR this morning, according to rates provided to BW by Zillow. This is 17 basis points lower than yesterday and 13 basis points lower than a week ago. (See our chart below for more specifics.) A basis point is one one-hundredth of a percentage point.

That sounds like a big drop, but honestly, lenders’ rates are kind of all over the place today. (Yes, I am a real human who looks at these things over my morning coffee. ☕) And considering the messy mix of economic signals right now, that tracks. Every lender is going to set their prices differently, considering these uncertainties:

  • Markets are split over whether the Federal Reserve will raise its benchmark rate next week, though a slightly larger majority expects that they will.

  • Oil prices nearly hit $100 a barrel this morning as conflict drags on in the Strait of Hormuz.

Your takeaway: When economic news is pinging nonstop and lenders are reacting differently, don’t treat the first mortgage rate you see as your only option. Rates vary widely by lender, so shopping around could save you thousands over the life of your loan.

Average mortgage rates, last 30 days

🤓 Kate on Rates: September 3, 2026

📈 What influences mortgage rates?

Mortgage rates are constantly changing, since a major part of how rates are set depends on reactions to new inflation reports, job numbers, Fed meetings, global news … you name it. For example, even tiny changes in the bond market can shift mortgage pricing.

There’s been a lot pushing mortgage rates higher recently. Let’s do a quick recap of three of the biggest influences, which all kinda boil down to one thing: Inflation.

One, we’ve got the war in Iran. After a weekslong stretch of relative peace, tensions have flared into actual aggression once again — and pretty much every time that’s happened, we’ve seen mortgage rates rise. Mortgage rates are pegged to the yield (essentially the return) on the 10-Year Treasury note. Concerns about the Iran war impeding trade, pushing up oil prices and overall, spurring inflation, keep driving bond yields higher. As yields go up, so do rates.

Two, Fed chatter. Chair Kevin Warsh has made abundantly clear that he would like Fed officials to communicate less, and he’s already made significant changes to the central bankers’ post-meeting statements. But that doesn’t mean he can stop anyone from talking, or stop markets from parsing the bankers’ every word.

Back on Aug. 28, which sounds like forever ago but really wasn’t, Warsh made his first official speech as chair. As always, he kept his remarks pretty high level. But he sounded just aggressive enough on inflation for Fed watchers to decide a quarter-percentage-point rate hike is likely at the Sept. 15-16 meeting (BTW that’s next week). The Federal Reserve doesn’t set mortgage rates, but its decisions are highly influential — and rates spiked upward following Warsh’s remarks.

But markets are fickle. Last week, a couple of Federal Reserve officials made public remarks that a rate hike may not be needed. That was enough to bring down those odds, and shave a few basis points off of Friday’s average mortgage rates.

Speaking of Friday: Last week closed with the case for maintaining the funds rate getting a little weaker, as August’s Employment Situation Summary (better known as the jobs report) showed a shockingly strong labor market. In August, the U.S. economy added 162,000 jobs, more than three times what economists had predicted. The unemployment rate continued to hold steady.

This was especially stunning coming off of July, which originally showed the economy losing 23,000 jobs. That stat’s been revised upward, and while it’s still way lower than August — 21,000 jobs gained — at least now it’s a positive number.

If the labor market were struggling, that would discourage the Fed from hiking rates. The central bankers raise the federal funds rate (that’s the overnight borrowing rate the Fed sets) to curb inflation. Part of that reasoning is that higher rates discourage businesses from expansion and hiring. If the labor market’s in bad shape, it’s risky to raise rates even if inflation’s high. But if it seems like the job market’s strong, the Fed can feel more confident about choosing to tackle inflation.

And back to inflation, because but certainly not least on the list of what’s driving mortgage rates, we’ve got actual inflation stats. If you’ve bought gas, groceries, or really anything you had a sense of the price history on lately, you’ve been feeling the pinch of rising prices. The Federal Reserve targets a 2% rate of inflation as healthy for the economy, but we’ve been above that since March 2021.

We’ll get brand new inflation data to close out this week, with August’s Consumer Price Index set for release on Friday, Sept. 11. If CPI comes in at or above expectations, that could tilt the odds back toward a rate hike from the Fed at its meeting next week.

Explore mortgages today and get started on your homeownership goals

Get personalized rates.

Unlock your lender matches with just a few simple questions. The sentence is missing, could you please provide more context or details so I can rewrite it for you? following sentence:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Rewritten sentence:
Over the lazy dog jumps the quick brown fox.

Share.

Related Posts

Add A Comment
Leave A Reply