What’s Happening with Mortgage Rates?

“What are the current mortgage rates?” “Will mortgage rates be lower later this year/next year/tomorrow?” These are questions I get asked all the time. As a realtor, of course I monitor mortgage rates, but when it comes to predicting the future…I leave that to the economists.

Will rates be lower next year? It depends who you ask. And it depends on a LOT of factors that are not predictable. If you are reading this in April of 2026, there’s a war with Iran that is affecting oil prices, which are in turn affecting the global economy. That wasn’t in any of the predictions that I saw from economists at the end of 2025.

So what can you do, as a person who wants to own a home? Talk to a lender (I can refer you to one or several if you need a recommendation) and find out how much you could reasonably afford at today’s rates. If that number is something that will buy a house that works for you – fantastic. Let’s start shopping. If it isn’t, then you either need to pay off debt, save more money to put toward a downpayment, or hope that rates go down. If you are a first time homebuyer trying to get into the very competitive East Bay real estate market, another possibility is first time buyer assistance, and there are hundreds of programs in California designed to help first time buyers with things like downpayment assistance or special interest rates exclusively for first time buyers.

But back to mortgage rates! If you want to have a better understanding of the factors that affect mortgage rates, there are two sites that I read regularly and recommend. One is mortgage news daily, which is the site that powers the little mortgage rate widget in the footer of my site. They update average rates daily, as the name suggests, and publish a lot of news articles that explain the various factors affecting rates. You can also find a lot of historical rate data on their site if you’re curious. The second is the JVM lending blog. I have learned so much about the mortgage industry from reading their blog. JVM is a lending company, so sometimes they post about topics that are specific to their business, but often, it is educational content about economics and mortgage rates.