- Mortgage rates rose to 6.37% on Thursday, a day after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates.
- The rate increase is a result of uncertainty surrounding future rate cuts.
- Experts, however, predict mortgage rates will remain steady amid continued economic uncertainty.
SALT LAKE CITY — The weekly average rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was down again Thursday, but a daily tracker registered a rise in rates a day after the Federal Reserve's first interest rate cut this year.
Mortgage rates were at 6.37% for a 30-year fixed rate loan by midday Thursday, according to Mortgage News Daily, up 0.15 percentage points from Wednesday's daily index of 6.22%, posted after the Fed lowered its benchmark interest rate by 0.25 percentage points.
On Tuesday, Mortgage News Daily listed the lowest mortgage rate in nearly three years, 6.13%.
"It's day two of mortgage rates surging higher — now back to the highest levels in two weeks," the site's Matthew Graham posted Thursday. "The juxtaposition of yesterday's Fed rate cut and the sudden mortgage rate spike is incredibly confusing to most of the population."
Buyers who didn't lock in the lower rates are "late to the party," he said, pointing out that while mortgage rates "are still lower than almost all of the past 11 months," they're now "SHARPLY higher between yesterday and today (roughly 0.25%, which is a very big two-day move)."
The reason for the shift in direction? Concern over whether more interest rates cuts are coming after Fed Chair Jerome Powell told reporters that Wednesday's action was "risk management," Graham explained in another post Wednesday.
He said Powell's remarks countered the support signaled by members of the Fed at Wednesday's meeting for two additional cuts this year in the interest rate that banks charge one another for short-term loans.
The long-term bond market tied to mortgage rates responded to what Graham said is the Fed continuing "to take things on a meeting by meeting basis and make decisions based on the new data that becomes available over that time."
Chen Zhao, head of economics research for the online brokerage firm Redfin, offered a similar analysis.
"Chair Powell's press conference emphasized the uncertainty in the rate cut projections and pushed back on the optimism for a string of cuts that had built before today's meeting," Zhao said in a post.
Noting mortgage rates have rebounded on "a strong possibility of no more rate cuts," she forecast that they "will remain steady as bond market participants await further economic data, particularly the next jobs report on Oct. 3."
As of Thursday, the weekly average for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was at 6.26%, according to the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, better known as Freddie Mac. That's 0.09 percentage points lower than the average for the week ending Sept. 11.
The weekly average rate, which rose above 7% in January, hasn't been that low since October 2024. Mortgage rates have been falling in recent weeks following indications from Powell that a rate cut was likely.
