Fixed Rates Dip With Stock Market
Mortgage rates fell this week to the lowest level in 20 months in a side effect of the seesawing stock market.</br></br>The decline in the average rate on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages to 7.21 percent from 7.35 percent a week earlier brought the average to its lowest level since the week ended Feb. 15, 1996, Freddie Mac, the mortgage-funding company, reported. It was the biggest drop in six weeks.</br></br>Mortgage rates this week keyed off the U.S. Treasury securities market, where rates fell as investors snapped up bonds in a "flight to quality."</br></br>Before stock market turmoil spread around the world from Southeast Asia, economists were predicting mortgage rates would drift up in the last part of the year.</br></br>Thirty-year mortgage rates hit a peak for the year so far of 8.18 percent in early April, after the Federal Reserve last tightened monetary policy.