Last week, the share of borrowers with rates under 5% grew moderately larger.
According to LendingTree's Mortgage Rate Competition Index, borrowers with rates under 5% increased to nearly 87% for the week ending March 17, 2019.
The report states that for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, 86.99% of purchase borrowers received offers under 5%, rising from 84.7% last week. That being said, this is a decrease from 2018’s rate when 87.3% of purchase offers were under 5%.
(Click to enlarge; Source: LendingTree)
The report also highlights that across all 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage purchase applications made on LendingTree’s website, 18.2% of borrowers were offered an interest rate of 4.7%, making it the most common interest rate.
When it came to 30-year fixed-rate mortgage refinance borrowers, 84.8% received offers under 5%, rising from 81.7% one week prior. This is moderately up from 2018’s rate when 83.9% of refinance offers were under 5%.
However, across all 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage refinance applications, the most common interest rate was 4.5%. This rate was offered to 19.8% of borrowers, according to the report.
Lastly, LendingTree reports that across all 30-year fixed-rate mortgage purchase applications on its site, the index edged up 2 basis points from the previous week, coming in at 0.78. This means that over 30 years, the average borrower could save $36,613 on a $300,000 loan.
Furthermore, with a wider refinance market index of 0.87, the typical refinance borrowers could have saved $40,812 by shopping for the lowest rate.
NOTE: The LendingTree Mortgage Rate Competition Index measures the spread in the APR of the best offers available on its website.