News release: “The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) reported that the National Average Contract Mortgage Rate for the Purchase of Previously Occupied Homes by Combined Lenders, used as an index in some ARM contracts, was 4.08 percent based on loans closed in February. Beginning this month, FHFA is calculating interest rates using un-weighted survey data. For January, a comparable rate based on unweighted data would have been 4.18 percent. Thus, there was a decrease of 0.10 percent from the previous month’s corresponding un-weighted rate. The complete Contract Rate series can be found here. The average interest rate on conventional, 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage loans of $417,000 or less decreased 5 basis points to 4.36 percent from January’s figure based on unweighted data. These rates are calculated from the FHFA’s Monthly Interest Rate Survey of purchase-money mortgages.”