Local insights from across the country.

Mortgage discount points are fees paid by you toward the lender, increasing closing costs in order to reduce the interest rate on the loan. Each “point” you buy costs 1% of the total mortgage amount and typically lowers the mortgage rate by .25%, resulting in a lower monthly bill over the life of the loan and lower interest paid.

The lowest 30-year mortgage rate for you may vary on a day-to-day basis, based on a number of market factors and benchmarks, including activity from the Federal Reserve, the bond market, inflation, and the overall health of the economy. Lenders can update their rates every day. Just because one lender has the lowest rate for you on a given day doesn’t guarantee that they’ll also have the lowest rate for you the next day.

A quick, simple way to check today’s lowest 30-year mortgage rates is via this rates tool, which is updated daily.

The short, unsatisfying answer: it depends. Current forecasts don’t suggest rates are likely to fall significantly in the near future. That said, high levels of volatility within the market mean that rates could indeed drop week-to-week, even over the course of a several month span during which rates rise overall. Checking regularly is the best way to stay up-to-date.

While a local lender may offer a longstanding history of operation, online mortgage providers bring their own suite of advantages to the table. Compared to local lenders, online providers have access to a much wider network of potential lenders, allowing you to compare more options and further ensure you’ve found the right loan for you. Online lenders also offer streamlined web-based platforms, which simplify the mortgage process by allowing you to track every step of your loan in one place. This same platform advantage can even save you time by making it quicker and easier to get pre-approved and apply for a loan.

The mortgage rate landscape is ever-changing: rates can update multiple times per day. A variety of factors affect today’s mortgage rates, some of which are outside of your control (like the overall economic outlook) and some that are within your control (like your credit score and type of loan). Influenced heavily by the current state of the market, you wind up with a collection of daily rates that are always subject to change.

A rate lock protects borrowers from some of the up-and-down nature of interest rates in the market.

With a rate lock, a lender agrees to offer the borrower an exact interest rate for a set window of time. If the market interest rates go up, the rate you’re being offered for your mortgage will remain steady, at least for the time frame specified by your lender. While lock periods typically range between 30-60 days, Morty also offers 75-, 90-, and 180-day locks.

The opposite of discount points, lender credits are when you take on a higher interest rate for additional money from the lender that will help offset your closing costs. They’re calculated the same way as discount points, but appear as a “negative” point on your loan, since you’re getting money from the lender rather than paying more to them. While credits help you pay less in closing costs upfront, accepting them will also increase your monthly mortgage payment.