Mortgage Interest Rates Forecast

Mortgage rates this week

Mortgage rates remained more or less flat the week ending January 30, with only slight shifts up or down.

• The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.92% APR, down two basis points from the previous week's average, according to rates provided to NerdWallet by Zillow. A basis point is one one-hundredth of a percentage point.

• The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.11% APR, up three basis points from the previous week's average.

• The 5-year adjustable-rate mortgage averaged 7.3% APR, up one basis point from the previous week's average.

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve chose to maintain the federal funds rate's current level. This was so widely expected that the only drama was over changes in the wording of the Fed's statement, which Chairman Jerome Powell explained away as "a little language cleanup." Close observers of the central bank noticed that 10 words about inflation's progress downward had been removed.

Mortgage interest rates have pretty much ignored the past few Fed announcements, and that pattern continued with this meeting. So far this year, we haven't seen decisive movements from mortgage rates, period: The 30-year fixed-rate flirted with the 7% threshold, but overall rates have stayed within a fairly limited 30-basis-point range. If economic indicators start to take a more definitive path in February, we could see larger movements from mortgage rates.