The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 7.40% in the week ended Oct. 8, up from 7.28% a week earlier and the highest reading since November 2023, Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey showed. It was the seventh consecutive weekly increase.
The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.73%, up from 6.60%. A year earlier the two averages stood at 6.30% and 5.53%, putting the 30-year 110 basis points higher than it was in October 2025 and the 15-year 120 basis points higher.
The survey has not been this high in nearly three years. Freddie Mac’s weekly series last printed 7.40% or above on Nov. 16, 2023, when the 30-year averaged 7.44% on the way down from a 7.79% peak the previous month. The series has climbed 142 basis points since Feb. 26 of this year, when it bottomed at 5.98%.
Freddie Mac attached no economist commentary to this week’s release, noting only that borrowers who collect multiple quotes can save over the life of a loan.
The bond market set the number
PMMS averages rates offered on applications submitted the prior Thursday through Wednesday, so this week’s reading reflects pricing from Oct. 1 to Oct. 7. The 10-year Treasury note β the benchmark most closely tracked by 30-year mortgage pricing β averaged about 5.28% over those five trading sessions, against about 5.23% in the comparable window a week earlier, according to Treasury’s daily par yield curve. The 10-year closed at 5.31% on Oct. 5, its 2026 high, and at 5.22% on Oct. 8. It began the year at 4.19% on Jan. 2 and troughed at 3.97% on Feb. 27.
Behind the yields is a policy picture that has reversed on the industry. The minutes of the Sept. 15-16 Federal Open Market Committee meeting, published Oct. 7, said most participants assessed that another increase in the target range for the federal funds rate would likely be appropriate by year end. Thirty-year mortgage rates do not track the federal funds rate directly; they track long-dated Treasury yields, and those yields have risen through the same stretch in which the 30-year survey average climbed from 6.71% in early September to above 7% by late September.
Borrowers are reacting by not borrowing
Application volume has given way. Citing Mortgage Bankers Association survey data, NAHB reported on Oct. 7 that total mortgage applications fell 7.7% from August to September on a seasonally adjusted basis and were down 35.4% from a year earlier. Refinance applications fell 16.5% month over month and 54.7% year over year; purchase applications were off 1.3% and 11.6%.
The composition is shifting with the level. Adjustable-rate mortgages made up 9.3% of September applications, 1.4 percentage points more than in August, NAHB said, with ARM applications up 7.6% from August even as fixed-rate applications fell 9.1%. The average ARM application was for $896,800, against $445,800 for the average purchase loan β a reminder that the ARM share moves first among jumbo borrowers, who have the balance sheets to carry reset risk.
The refinance collapse has been the sharpest adjustment. Last week’s MBA survey had already put the 30-year contract rate at 7.49% with refinance volume running at less than half last year’s pace; the September monthly data confirm that the pool of borrowers with a rate above today’s market has effectively emptied.
What 110 basis points costs
Run the survey averages through a standard amortization and the arithmetic is unsentimental. Principal and interest on a $400,000 30-year loan comes to roughly $2,770 a month at 7.40%, against roughly $2,476 at last October’s 6.30% β about $294 more a month, or $3,500 a year, for the identical loan. Measured from February’s 5.98% low, the same loan costs about $376 more a month.
That math, on our reading, is why the fall selling season has gone quiet rather than cheap. The lock-in logic is familiar: an owner carrying a 3% note has little reason to trade into a 7.40% payment, and a buyer who qualified at 6.30% in the spring has to requalify now. The mortgage market’s problem this autumn is not credit availability but arithmetic.
Freddie Mac publishes the next survey on Oct. 15 at noon ET.
