Mortgage rates fall

Freddie Mac's latest weekly survey shows the average fixed rate on a
30-year loan at 5.71% through Sept. 1, down from last week's 5.77%. A
year ago the average rate was also 5.77%. Earlier Freddie Mac had said
that rates would likely trend higher late in 2005. But this weekly decline
is the third straight.

The average for a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage this week was 5.32%,
down from last week's 5.35%, but up from last year's 5.15%.

Five-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages (ARM),
averaged 5.3% this week, unchanged from a week ago. One-year
Treasury-indexed ARMs averaged 4.48%, down from last week's 4.56%.
At this time last year, the one-year ARM averaged 3.97%.

To achieve the mortgage rates this week, the 15-year loan required the
payment of an average 0.5 point (A point is 1% of the loan amount,
charged as prepaid interest), the 30-year loan and the 5-year ARM
required 0.6 point, and the 1-year ARM required 0.7 point.