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Historical Mortgage Rates: Charting Home Interest Rates Over Time
Weekly, monthly, and yearly mortgage interest rates over time, tracking the 30-year and 15-year fixed-rate mortgage from the early 1970s through today. Data is reported weekly by Freddie Mac and updated here every Friday.
What Is the 30-Year Fixed Mortgage Rate?
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is the most common home loan in the United States. It locks in a single interest rate for the entire 30-year repayment period, giving borrowers a predictable monthly payment regardless of what happens in the broader economy.
The rate isn't set by any single institution. It's determined by the bond market, specifically the yield on mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Lenders package home loans into bonds and sell them to investors. The return those investors demand directly influences the rate you're offered. The 10-year Treasury yield is the most closely watched benchmark because mortgages are typically repaid or refinanced within about a decade.
What Impacts Mortgage Rates?
Mortgage rates respond to a web of economic forces. The biggest drivers include:
- Federal Reserve policy. The Fed doesn't set mortgage rates directly, but its actions ripple through. When the Fed raises the federal funds rate to fight inflation, borrowing costs across the economy rise, and mortgage rates follow. When it cuts rates or buys bonds (quantitative easing), rates tend to fall.
- Inflation. Investors who buy mortgage bonds need a return that outpaces inflation. When inflation rises or is expected to rise, they demand higher yields, which pushes rates up.
- The bond market and 10-year Treasury. Mortgage rates closely track the 10-year Treasury yield. When investors flee stocks for the safety of bonds (e.g., during a crisis), bond prices rise, yields fall, and mortgage rates drop.
- Economic growth and employment. Strong economic data tends to push rates higher as investors expect the Fed to tighten policy. Weak data has the opposite effect.
- Global events. Wars, pandemics, and financial crises can cause sudden flights to safety that pull rates down sharply, as happened in 2020.
Mortgage Rates by Decade
The decade opened with rates around 7.5%. Then came the oil embargo of 1973, soaring energy prices, and expansionary monetary policy that let inflation run hot. By 1979, the 30-year rate had climbed past 11% and was still accelerating. The stage was set for the most dramatic rate spike in American history.
Fed Chair Paul Volcker crushed inflation by ratcheting interest rates to extraordinary levels. The 30-year mortgage hit 18.4% in October 1981, the highest ever recorded. A median-priced home that cost $70,000 carried a monthly payment of over $1,000, a staggering sum at the time. Once inflation was broken, rates began a long, choppy decline through the decade, ending the '80s near 10%.
With inflation tamed, rates drifted steadily lower across the decade, from roughly 10% at the start to under 7% by 1998. The economic backdrop was favorable: the tech boom, rising productivity, and federal budget surpluses kept bond markets calm. The brief spike in 1994, when the Fed surprised markets with aggressive rate hikes, was the decade's biggest disruption. But the dot-com bubble channeled money into stocks rather than housing, keeping the real estate market relatively stable.
The decade started at 8% and saw rates fall steadily as the Fed cut rates in response to the dot-com crash and 9/11. Cheap credit fueled a massive housing bubble. When the subprime mortgage crisis hit in 2007-2008, the financial system nearly collapsed. The Fed responded with unprecedented quantitative easing, buying trillions in mortgage bonds and pushing the 30-year rate from over 6% down toward 5%. The era of ultra-low rates had begun.
The longest sustained period of low mortgage rates in history. The Fed maintained near-zero interest rates and continued buying bonds for years after the financial crisis. Rates hovered between 3.5% and 5% for the entire decade. The "taper tantrum" of 2013 caused a brief spike when the Fed hinted it would slow bond purchases, but rates quickly settled back down. By late 2019, the 30-year rate was near 3.7%.
COVID-19 triggered the most dramatic rate drop in modern history. The 30-year mortgage fell to an all-time low of 2.65% in January 2021 as the Fed bought bonds at a record pace. Then came inflation: supply chains broke, demand surged, and the Fed began the most aggressive rate-hiking cycle in decades. By October 2023, the 30-year rate breached 8% for the first time since 2000. Rates have since settled into the 6-7% range as the Fed paused and began modest cuts in late 2024.
Data & Methodology
Source: Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, accessed via the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED). Series MORTGAGE30US (30-year) and MORTGAGE15US (15-year, available from 1991).
Frequency: Rates are reported weekly, every Thursday. The chart shows actual weekly observations, not monthly or yearly averages, so you see the full detail of rate movements.
Note: These are average rates for conforming, conventional mortgages with 20% down. Individual rates vary based on credit score, loan type, and lender. Data updated weekly by an automated process.