Each week, since April 1971, Freddie Mac surveys lenders on the rates and points for their most popular 30-year fixed-rate, 15-year fixed-rate and 5/1 hybrid amortizing adjustable-rate mortgage products. The survey is based on first-lien prime conventional conforming home purchase mortgages with a loan-to-value of 80 percent. In addition, the adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) products are indexed to U.S. Treasury yields and lenders are asked for both the initial coupon rate and points as well as the margin on the ARM products.
Lenders surveyed each week are a mix of lender types – credit unions, commercial banks and mortgage lending companies – is roughly proportional to the level of mortgage business that each type commands nationwide.
As of November 17, 2022, the process for gathering the data was updated. Instead of surveying lenders, the Primary Mortgage Market Survey® results are now based on actual applications from lenders across the country that are submitted to Freddie Mac when a borrower applies for a mortgage.
Additionally, Freddie Mac will no longer publish fees/points or adjustable rates.
The survey is collected from Thursday through Wednesday and the results are released on Thursdays at 12:00 PM EST.
Freddie Mac (background)
Chartered by Congress in 1970 to support the U.S. housing finance system and help ensure a reliable and affordable supply of mortgage funds across the country.
Rather than lending directly to borrowers, Freddie Mac operates in the U.S. secondary mortgage market, buying loans that meet our standards from approved lenders.
Those lenders are then, in turn, able to provide more loans to qualified borrowers and keep capital flowing into the housing market. Freddie Mac then pools the mortgages it buys into securities, which they sell to investors around the world.