For anyone shopping for a house this fall, the market is sending two messages at once. Sellers have rarely been this eager. The money to buy from them has rarely been this stubborn.
Chart: RateZip · Source: lender-posted rates tracked daily by RateZip.
On the price side, the tilt toward buyers is now the widest on record. Home sellers outnumbered buyers by about 58% nationally in August, the biggest gap in records going back to 2013, according to Redfin, which counted roughly 1.53 million sellers in the market, the most since early 2020. In Nashville, Miami and Houston, sellers outnumbered buyers more than two to one.
On the financing side, the direction is the opposite. Five of the six lenders whose 30-year fixed rate RateZip tracks posted a higher number Friday morning, with Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank both at 6.875% after adding 0.125 points and Bank of America at 7.125%. Nationally, the average 30-year fixed rose to 6.76% in the week ending September 10 from 6.71% a week earlier, according to Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey.
Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, sees the effect on buying activity. "Mortgage rates and home sales move in opposite directions, so it's not surprising to see a mild dip in home buying activity due to high mortgage rates," Yun said in a statement Thursday.
The lender you pick matters more than the day
Moves of an eighth of a point grab headlines, but the bigger number on Friday's table is the distance between lenders. AmeriSave's posted 30-year fixed, 5.875% even after its increase, sits 1.25 points below Bank of America's. On a $400,000 loan that spread works out to about $329 a month, a gap that dwarfs any single day's repricing.
The increases are not spread evenly across products either. U.S. Bank's move Friday was its fourth in three weeks on its 20-year fixed, which is now up 0.5 points over that stretch, and its posted 7/6 ARM has climbed 1.125 points in the past week, the biggest weekly move in the tracked set.
As for why rates are rising, Joel Kan, deputy chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association, pointed to the bond market. "Mortgage rates moved higher last week, driven by ongoing investor concerns over inflation and the federal budget deficit," Kan said in a statement Wednesday.
Homeowners have stopped refinancing and started borrowing against the house
The other group feeling the squeeze is homeowners who might have refinanced. Refinance applications fell 6% week over week and were 25% below a year earlier in the week ending Sept. 4, the slowest refi pace since May 2025, according to MBA data reported by Scotsman Guide. Purchase applications were roughly flat while the overall applications index fell 2.7%.
Instead, borrowers are turning to the equity they already have. In RateZip's Mortgage Demand Index, built from the mortgage inquiries consumers submit across our network, home-equity products, meaning HELOCs plus reverse mortgages, drew 76% of inquiries over the three months through August, up from 43% in the same months a year earlier. Refinance shrank from 39% of the mix to 2% over the same span. Overall inquiry volume in August was 11% higher than July's and 157% higher than a year earlier.
That is the shape of the market heading into fall: more sellers than buyers on the ground, more homeowners tapping the house they own than swapping the loan on it, and a rate sheet that keeps inching higher for both.
Today's posted rates: the full table
| Lender | 30-Yr | 15-Yr | 20-Yr | FHA 30-Yr | VA 30-Yr | Jumbo 30-Yr | 7/6 ARM | HELOC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AmeriSave | 5.875% / 6.407% (+0.125) | 4.99% / 5.845% (+0.115) | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| New American Funding | 6.625% / 6.74% | 6.125% / 6.316% | — | 6.25% / 7.287% | 6.25% / 6.681% | — | — | — |
| Rocket Mortgage | 6.99% / 7.298% (+0.115) | 6.25% / 6.712% (+0.125) | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Wells Fargo | 6.875% / 7.035% (+0.125) | 6.125% / 6.379% (+0.125) | — | — | 6.25% / 6.49% | — | 6.5% / 6.608% | — |
| U.S. Bank | 6.875% / 7.053% (+0.125) | 6.375% / 6.642% (+0.125) | 6.875% / 7.058% (+0.375) | 6.75% / 7.659% (+0.125) | 6.625% / 6.994% (+0.125) | 7.125% / 7.298% (+0.125) | 7.25% / 7.056% (+0.125) | — |
| Bank of America | 7.125% / 7.349% (+0.125) | 6.375% / 6.753% (+0.125) | 7% / 7.296% (+0.125) | — | — | — | 6.5% / 6.663% (+0.25) | — |
| Veterans United | — | — | — | — | 6.25% / 6.715% (+0.125) | — | — | — |
| FourLeaf Federal Credit Union | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 6.75% / 6.75% |
Rates are each lender's own published rate as of 9:50 a.m. ET, collected from their public rate pages and feeds. The APR is the better cross-lender comparison; a figure in parentheses is today's change; a '—' means the lender doesn't post that product. How we collect and publish this: our rate methodology.
Source: Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey via FRED®, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.