Mortgage borrowers who shopped around last week could’ve saved $47,073 on the life of a $300,000 loan, according to LendingTree's Mortgage Rate Competition Index.
The index measures the spread in the APR of the best offers available on its website. LendingTree derives that savings claim by comparing the amount a borrower would pay out of over the life of a loan at the lowest available interest rate on its site versus the highest available interest rate.
According to the company’s data, the share of borrowers who received rates under 4.25% slid to 56.8%, with the index falling to 0.99 for the week ending July 14, 2019.
This percentage is a moderately down from last week’s 60.1%, but still surpasses 2018’s rate when only 0.07% of purchase offers were under 4.25%.
The report also notes that across all 30-year, fixed-rate purchase mortgage applications made on LendingTree’s website, 15.4% of borrowers were offered an interest rate of 4%, making it the most common interest rate.
When it came to 30-year fixed-rate, refinance borrowers, 70.6% received offers under 4.25%, sliding from 72.8% one week prior. Nevertheless, this rate is still up from 2018’s rate when 0% of refinance offers were under 4.25%.
This means with a wider refinance market index of 1.10, the typical refinance borrower could have saved $52,554 by shopping around for the lowest rate.
According to the report, across all 30-year, fixed-rate refinance applications, the most common interest rate was 4%. This rate was offered to 17.95% of borrowers.
This image highlights the distribution of interest rates:
