Mortgage Rate 4 Years High

The mortgage rate moved up again this week for third week in a row. The 30-year fixed rates have moved up more than half a percentage point since the start of the year. This is slowly but surely cooling off the housing market.

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight said today its home-price index was up 12.5% in the past year and up 2% from the 4th quarter to the 1st quarter. It was the slowest quarterly gain in prices since the 1st quarter of 2004. In the 4th quarter, prices were up 13.3% year-over-year and had risen 3.1% quarter to quarter. Among 275 metro areas, 53 saw prices decline from the 4th quarter to the 1st quarter, including some previous hot markets in California.

According to Freddie Mac's weekly survey, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.78% in the week that ended today -- higher than its 6.71% average last week. At this time last year, the loan averaged 5.62%. The 30-year mortgage has not been higher since the week ending May 24, 2002, when it averaged 6.81%. The 15-year fixed rate averaged at 6.43% this week, up from last week's 6.36%. At this time last year this rate was 5.20%.

Rate for 5-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages (ARM) also went up this week to 6.39% from 6.32% last week. This rate averaged 5.19% a year ago. The 1-year Treasury-indexed ARMs also moved up this week to 5.82%, from 5.75% last week. At this time in 2005, the ARM averaged 4.33%.