The more interest rates increase, the more the percentage of borrowers with mortgage interest rates under 5% decrease.
LendingTree, an online marketplace for connecting home borrowers with lenders, is tracking mortgage interest rates and the number of users with its Mortgage Rate Competition Index.
During the last week on December 2018, 70.3% of mortgage purchase borrowers received a rate offer under 5%. The week before, 73.4% received a rate offer under 5%. Most eye-popping, 95.9% of borrowers received a rate offer under 5% in December 2017.
Across all 30-year fixed-rate mortgage purchase applications on Lending Tree’s website, 18.8% were offered a rate of 4.75% making it the most common rate during the last week of December.
70% of all 30-year fixed-rate mortgage refinance borrowers received offers under 5%. This is a significant decline from December 2017 when 95.8% of all mortgage refinance offers were under 5%.
Obviously, rising interest rates are also shrinking the pool of eligible borrowers for both mortgage purchase and mortgage refinance borrowers.
Cash-out refinancing is the only category within this refinancing niche that is climbing. During 2017-2018, cash-out refinances increased from 142,000 to 152,000. Put another way, cash-out refinancing grew to 35% of the refinance niche in 2018 from 23% in 2017.
