Mortgage Rates Today, Monday, October 19: Starting the Week Lower

Mortgage rates are starting off this week with a nice drop, though the likely reason for the fall could be a little anxiety-inducing.

The average interest rate on a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage dropped to 7.20% APR, according to rates provided to BW by Zillow. This is 15 basis points lower than Friday and 12 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.

Rates started this slide last week, as investors’ previously sky-high confidence in AI came a little closer to earth. Tech stocks lost a bit of their luster, and bonds looked more appealing. Greater demand for bonds pushed up bond prices, dropping bond yields (they move inversely). And mortgage rates are often indexed to the yield on the 10-year Treasury so, huzzah, lower mortgage rates.

On one hand, yay! But on the other hand … uh, what was that about stocks? For way more detail, keep reading below the chart.

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.

Like I mentioned above, mortgage rates started edging lower last week as Treasury yields came down. Mortgage rates are generally benchmarked to the yield on 10-year Treasury notes, so where the yield goes, rates go, too.

The yield is basically the return investors get on a bond. A bond is a little piece of government or corporate debt; when an investor buys a bond, they’re making a tiny loan to the issuer. The issuer agrees to pay them back a set amount over the bond’s lifespan (that’s the yield), and when the bond matures, the investor gets the bond’s original price back. That’s why unlike anything-could-happen stocks, bonds are generally considered relatively low risk.

A bond investor who buys a bond at issuance knows immediately: Here’s my cost, here’s what I’ll earn and here’s when my initial investment will be returned. When investors sell bonds to each other, things get more interesting, because the market now determines the price, and that shifts the relative value of the yield.

Here’s how that works. If you bought a $100 bond with $5 annual yield payments, that yield is 5%. But say you want to sell that bond but can’t find a full-price buyer; the best price you can get for it is $80. The annual yield payments are still $5, but since they’re relative to that lower price, the yield is now 6.25%.

For much of the summer and early fall, we saw lots of Treasury bond selling, which drove prices down and yields up. That kept pushing mortgage rates higher. Additionally, tech companies issuing loads of corporate bonds to help fund AI buildout meant that bond investors had a sexier option than Plain Jane Treasuries.

Last week, that dynamic reversed as doubts crept in about the potential profits from AI. September’s Consumer Price Index, which came out last Wednesday, and Producer Price Index, from Thursday, showed that inflation’s still running hot. If prices are climbing, the costs of building data structures and other AI infrastructure will increase, right? So to get solid returns on these investments, tech companies are going to have to make some serious profits. That right there is where some investors are having misgivings.

It sort of played out like a teen movie. Investors realized that the hot, popular girl (tech stocks) might not actually be all that, and their eyes turned to the reliable girl-next-door who’d been there for them all along (Treasuries).

Just so we’re clear: No one is saying the AI bubble is bursting, or really that there even is an AI bubble. But yes, prices for Treasuries went up and yields fell, so mortgage rates ebbed, too. Whether this downward trend will last depends on a lot of factors, including whether tech companies can convince investors that they’re on track for strong profits and whether anything can improve fuel prices, since that’s a massive factor in inflation.