Mortgage Rates Start The Week Back Near Recent Highs

The last few weeks have seen mortgage rates move in a far narrower range compared to the month and a half leading up to December 14th.  That said, the general trend has been higher. Mortgage lenders tend to publish rates only on non-holiday business days.  As such, today was the first day of the current week.  Global markets were open on Monday, however, and Monday's trading led to U.S. rates starting out with headwinds before the day began. Tuesday's key calendar event--a Q&A with the Federal Reserve's Christopher Waller--put additional upward pressure on rates.  The result is the average lender moving back up near the highest levels of the past several weeks, but not quite as high as the middle of last week. To put all of the above in perspective, rates were near 8% when the Nov/Dec rally began and fell into the 6.6s by December 14th.  They're currently still well under 7%, meaning that a vast majority of the improvement has been retained despite the modest erosion.