Mortgage and refinance rates today, March 4, 2025: Rates hold steady
Some mortgage rates have decreased today while others have increased, but either way, the shifts are pretty minor. According to Zillow, the average 30-year fixed interest rate is down one basis point to 6.26%, and the 15-year fixed rate is up one basis point to 5.58%.
Interest rates have fallen for the last two weeks, and now that rates are holding steady, it could be a good time to start applying for preapproval with mortgage lenders.
Dig deeper: 2025 housing market — Is it a good time to buy a house?
Here are the current mortgage rates, according to our latest Zillow data:
30-year fixed: 6.26%
20-year fixed: 5.94%
15-year fixed: 5.58%
5/1 ARM: 6.15%
7/1 ARM: 6.21%
30-year VA: 5.72%
15-year VA: 5.24%
5/1 VA: 5.89%
Remember that these are the national averages and rounded to the nearest hundredth.
Read more: How to get the lowest mortgage rates possible
Have questions about buying, owning, or selling a house? Submit your question to Yahoo's panel of Realtors using this Google form.
These are the current mortgage refinance rates, according to the latest Zillow data:
30-year fixed: 6.30%
20-year fixed: 5.92%
15-year fixed: 5.59%
5/1 ARM: 6.24%
7/1 ARM: 6.55%
30-year VA: 5.73%
15-year VA: 5.43%
5/1 VA: 5.91%
30-year FHA: 5.96%
15-year FHA: 5.24%
Again, the numbers provided are national averages rounded to the nearest hundredth. Refinance rates are usually higher than purchase rates.
Limited-time offer: Earn Southwest's Companion Pass as a credit card welcome bonus
A mortgage calculator can help you see how various mortgage term lengths and interest rates will affect your monthly payments. Use the free Yahoo Finance mortgage calculator to play around with different outcomes.
Our calculator also considers factors like property taxes and homeowners insurance when calculating your estimated monthly mortgage payment. This gives you a better idea of your total monthly payment than if you just looked at mortgage principal and interest.
As a rule of thumb, 15-year mortgage rates are lower than 30-year mortgage rates. When comparing 15- versus 30-year mortgage rates, know that the shorter term will save you money on interest in the long run. However, your monthly payments will be higher because you're paying off the same loan amount in half the time.
For example, with a $400,000 mortgage with a 30-year term and a 6.26% rate, you'll make a monthly payment of about $2,465 toward your mortgage principal and interest. As interest accumulates over decades, you'll end up paying $487,570 in interest.
If you get a $400,000 15-year mortgage with a 5.58% rate, you'll pay about $3,285 monthly toward your principal and interest. However, you'll only pay $191,361 in interest over the years.
If that 15-year mortgage monthly payment is too high, remember you can always make extra mortgage payments on your 30-year loan to pay off your mortgage faster and ultimately pay less interest.
With a fixed-rate mortgage, your rate is locked in from day one. However, you will get a new rate if you refinance your mortgage.
An adjustable-rate mortgage keeps your rate the same for a set period of time. Then the rate will go up or down depending on several factors, such as the economy and the maximum amount your rate can change according to your contract. For example, with a 7/1 ARM, your rate would be locked in for the first seven years, then change every year for the remainder of your term.
Adjustable rates sometimes start lower than fixed rates, but once the initial rate-lock period ends, you risk your interest rate going up. ARM rates have also been starting higher than fixed rates recently, so they're not as good of a deal as usual.
Dig deeper: Adjustable-rate vs. fixed-rate mortgage — Which should you choose?
Mortgage rates have been decreasing for about two weeks, but they're fairly stagnant today. Economists also don't expect drastic drops before the end of 2025.
In 2024, mortgage rates trended downward from early August to the Sept. 18 Federal Reserve meeting, when the central bank announced a 50-basis-point slash to the federal funds rate. Since that announcement, mortgage rates have mostly increased or held steady.
The Fed decreased its rate again at its November and December meetings (by 25bps each time). The trajectory of future mortgage rates will largely depend on the Federal Reserve's decision on whether or not to cut the federal funds rate at its 2025 meetings.
The Fed decided not to cut the fed funds rate at its Jan. 29 meeting. According to the CME FedWatch tool, there's currently a 91% chance that the rate remains unchanged at the March meeting too. This means rates probably won't significantly drop in the next couple of months.
Dig deeper: Understanding the Fed's rate decisions — Do we want high or low interest rates?
According to Zillow data, today's 30-year fixed rate for purchases is 6.26%, and the 30-year refinance rate is 6.30%. These are the national averages, so keep in mind the average in your state or city could be different. Your rate will also vary depending on your personal finances.
Mortgage rates will probably gradually drop throughout 2025, but they're unlikely to plummet anytime soon.
Mortgage rates should go down in 2025, though probably not as drastically as many expected a few months ago. Any decreases may be relatively small depending on the economy, inflation, and the Fed.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
41 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Mortgage and refinance interest rates today, June 12, 2025: Decreases following favorable inflation report
Mortgage interest rates are lower this morning, following a better-than-expected inflation report on Wednesday. According to Zillow, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate fell five basis points to 6.76%, while the 15-year fixed rate moved three basis points lower, to 5.96%. The latest Consumer Price Index showed inflation notching a slight 0.1% increase, with any tariff-related impact not yet affecting the public's pocketbooks. While that's good news for consumers, it means any rate cut by the Federal Reserve will likely be delayed until September. For mortgage rates, it remains business as usual: waiting for a reason to make a substantial move up or down. Dig deeper: What the latest CPI report means for mortgage rates Here are the current mortgage rates, according to the latest Zillow data: 30-year fixed: 6.76% 20-year fixed: 6.34% 15-year fixed: 5.96% 5/1 ARM: 6.84% 7/1 ARM: 6.46% 30-year VA: 6.28% 15-year VA: 5.65% 5/1 VA: 6.20% Remember, these are the national averages and rounded to the nearest hundredth. Learn more: How to get the lowest mortgage rate possible Here are today's mortgage refinance interest rates, according to the latest Zillow data: 30-year fixed: 6.83% 20-year fixed: 6.35% 15-year fixed: 5.95% 5/1 ARM: 7.13% 7/1 ARM: 6.59% 30-year VA: 6.31% 15-year VA: 6.04% 5/1 VA: 6.08% As with the purchase mortgage rates, these are national averages we've rounded to the nearest hundredth. Refinance rates can be higher than purchase mortgage rates, but that isn't always the case. Use the mortgage calculator below to see how various mortgage rates will impact your monthly payments. The free Yahoo Finance mortgage payment calculator goes even deeper by including factors like homeowners insurance and property taxes in your calculation. You can even add private mortgage insurance costs and HOA dues if they apply to you. These monthly expenses, along with your mortgage principal and interest rate, will give you a realistic idea of what your monthly payment could be. A mortgage interest rate is a fee for borrowing money from your lender, expressed as a percentage. There are two basic types of mortgage rates: fixed and adjustable rates. A fixed-rate mortgage locks in your rate for the entire life of your loan. For example, if you get a 30-year mortgage with a 6% interest rate, your rate will stay at 6% for the entire 30 years. (Unless you refinance or sell the home.) An adjustable-rate mortgage keeps your rate the same for the first few years, then changes it periodically. Let's say you get a 5/1 ARM with an introductory rate of 6%. Your rate would be 6% for the first five years and then the rate would increase or decrease once per year for the last 25 years of your term. Whether your rate goes up or down depends on several factors, such as the economy and U.S. housing market. At the beginning of your mortgage term, most of your monthly payment goes toward interest. As time passes, less of your payment goes toward interest, and more goes toward the mortgage principal or the amount you originally borrowed. Dig deeper: Adjustable-rate vs. fixed-rate mortgage — Which should you choose? Two categories determine mortgage rates: ones you can control and ones you cannot control. What factors can you control? First, you can compare the best mortgage lenders to find the one that gives you the lowest rate and fees. Second, lenders typically extend lower rates to people with higher credit scores, lower debt-to-income (DTI) ratios, and considerable down payments. If you can save more or pay down debt before securing a mortgage, a lender will probably give you a better interest rate. What factors can you not control? In short, the economy. The list of ways the economy impacts mortgage rates is long, but here are the basic details. If the economy — think employment rates, for example — is struggling, mortgage rates go down to encourage borrowing, which helps boost the economy. If the economy is strong, mortgage rates go up to temper spending. With all other things being equal, mortgage refinance rates are usually a little higher than purchase rates. So don't be surprised if your refinance rate is higher than you may have expected. Two of the most common mortgage terms are 30-year and 15-year fixed-rate mortgages. Both lock in your rate for the entire loan term. A 30-year mortgage is popular because it has relatively low monthly payments. But it comes with a higher interest rate than shorter terms, and because you're accumulating interest for three decades, you'll pay a lot of interest in the long run. A 15-year mortgage can be great because it has a lower rate than you'll get with longer terms, so you'll pay less in interest over the years. You'll also pay off your mortgage much faster. But your monthly payments will be higher because you're paying off the same loan amount in half the time. Basically, 30-year mortgages are more affordable from month to month, while 15-year mortgages are cheaper in the long run. According to 2024 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data, some of the banks with the lowest median mortgage rates are Bank of America and Citibank. However, it's a good idea to shop around for the best rate with not just banks, but also credit unions and companies specializing in mortgage lending. Yes, 2.75% is a fantastic mortgage rate. You're unlikely to get a 2.75% rate in today's market unless you take on an assumable mortgage from a seller who locked in this rate in 2020 or 2021, when rates were at all-time lows. According to Freddie Mac, the lowest-ever 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 2.65%. This was the national average in January 2021. It is extremely unlikely that rates will dip below 3% again anytime soon. Some experts say it's worth refinancing when you can lock in a rate that's 2% less than your current mortgage rate. Others say 1% is the magic number. It all depends on what your financial goals are when refinancing and when your break-even point would be after paying refinance closing costs.
CNBC
an hour ago
- CNBC
Nvidia CEO says this is the decade of robotics and autonomous vehicles
Autonomous vehicles and robotics are going to take off in a big way in the years ahead, according to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. "This is going to be the decade of AV [autonomous vehicles], robotics, autonomous machines," Huang told CNBC's Arjun Kharpal Thursday at the Viva Tech conference in Paris. Nvidia plays a significant role in the rollout of driverless vehicles as the U.S. chipmaking giant sells both hardware and software solutions for AVs. Self-driving cars are being spotted more frequently in the U.S., where Google-owned Waymo is operating robotaxi services in parts of San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. Meanwhile, a number of Chinese companies including Baidu and are also running their own respective robotaxi fleets. Europe, on the other hand, is yet to see significant AV adoption — primarily because the regulations are not yet clear enough for self-driving technology companies to get their services off the ground. However, the technology is beginning to gain more traction. In the U.K., legislation called the Autonomous Vehicles Act has been passed into law, paving the way for self-driving vehicles to arrive on roads by 2026. Uber on Tuesday announced a partnership with British self-driving car technology firm Wayve to launch trials of fully autonomous rides in the U.K., starting in spring 2026.
WIRED
an hour ago
- WIRED
Vibe Coding Is Coming for Engineering Jobs
Jun 12, 2025 6:30 AM Engineering was once the most stable and lucrative job in tech. Then AI learned to code. Photo-Illustration:On a 5K screen in Kirkland, Washington, four terminals blur with activity as artificial intelligence generates thousands of lines of code. Steve Yegge, a veteran software engineer who previously worked at Google and AWS, sits back to watch. 'This one is running some tests, that one is coming up with a plan. I am now coding on four different projects at once, although really I'm just burning tokens,' Yegge says, referring to the cost of generating chunks of text with a large language model (LLM). Learning to code has long been seen as the ticket to a lucrative, secure career in tech. Now, the release of advanced coding models from firms like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google threatens to upend that notion entirely. X and Bluesky are brimming with talk of companies downsizing their developer teams—or even eliminating them altogether. When ChatGPT debuted in late 2022, AI models were capable of autocompleting small portions of code—a helpful, if modest step forward that served to speed up software development. As models advanced and gained 'agentic' skills that allow them to use software programs, manipulate files, and access online services, engineers and non-engineers alike started using the tools to build entire apps and websites. Andrej Karpathy, a prominent AI researcher, coined the term 'vibe coding' in February, to describe the process of developing software by prompting an AI model with text. The rapid progress has led to speculation—and even panic—among developers, who fear that most development work could soon be automated away, in what would amount to a job apocalypse for engineers. 'We are not far from a world—I think we'll be there in three to six months—where AI is writing 90 percent of the code,' Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, said at a Council on Foreign Relations event in March. 'And then in 12 months, we may be in a world where AI is writing essentially all of the code,' he added. But many experts warn that even the best models have a way to go before they can reliably automate a lot of coding work. While future advancements might unleash AI that can code just as well as a human, until then relying too much on AI could result in a glut of buggy and hackable code, as well as a shortage of developers with the knowledge and skills needed to write good software. David Autor, an economist at MIT who studies how AI affects employment, says it's possible that software development work will be automated—similar to how transcription and translation jobs are quickly being replaced by AI. He notes, however, that advanced software engineering is much more complex and will be harder to automate than routine coding. Autor adds that the picture may be complicated by the 'elasticity' of demand for software engineering—the extent to which the market might accommodate additional engineering jobs. 'If demand for software were like demand for colonoscopies, no improvement in speed or reduction in costs would create a mad rush for the proctologist's office,' Autor says. 'But if demand for software is like demand for taxi services, then we may see an Uber effect on coding: more people writing more code at lower prices, and lower wages.' Yegge's experience shows that perspectives are evolving. A prolific blogger as well as coder, Yegge was previously doubtful that AI would help produce much code. Today, he has been vibe-pilled, writing a book called Vibe Coding with another experienced developer, Gene Kim, that lays out the potential and the pitfalls of the approach. Yegge became convinced that AI would revolutionize software development last December, and he has led a push to develop AI coding tools at his company, Sourcegraph. 'This is how all programming will be conducted by the end of this year,' Yegge predicts. 'And if you're not doing it, you're just walking in a race.' The Vibe-Coding Divide Today, coding message boards are full of examples of mobile apps, commercial websites, and even multiplayer games all apparently vibe-coded into being. Experienced coders, like Yegge, can give AI tools instructions and then watch AI bring complex ideas to life. Several AI-coding startups, including Cursor and Windsurf have ridden a wave of interest in the approach. (OpenAI is widely rumored to be in talks to acquire Windsurf). At the same time, the obvious limitations of generative AI, including the way models confabulate and become confused, has led many seasoned programmers to see AI-assisted coding—and especially gung-ho, no-hands vibe coding—as a potentially dangerous new fad. Martin Casado, a computer scientist and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz who sits on the board of Cursor, says the idea that AI will replace human coders is overstated. 'AI is great at doing dazzling things, but not good at doing specific things,' he said. Still, Casado has been stunned by the pace of recent progress. 'I had no idea it would get this good this quick,' he says. 'This is the most dramatic shift in the art of computer science since assembly was supplanted by higher-level languages.' Ken Thompson, vice president of engineering at Anaconda, a company that provides open source code for software development, says AI adoption tends to follow a generational divide, with younger developers diving in and older ones showing more caution. For all the hype, he says many developers still do not trust AI tools because their output is unpredictable, and will vary from one day to the next, even when given the same prompt. 'The nondeterministic nature of AI is too risky, too dangerous,' he explains. Both Casado and Thompson see the vibe-coding shift as less about replacement than abstraction, mimicking the way that new languages like Python build on top of lower-level languages like C, making it easier and faster to write code. New languages have typically broadened the appeal of programming and increased the number of practitioners. AI could similarly increase the number of people capable of producing working code. Bad Vibes Paradoxically, the vibe-coding boom suggests that a solid grasp of coding remains as important as ever. Those dabbling in the field often report running into problems, including introducing unforeseen security issues, creating features that only simulate real functionality, accidentally running up high bills using AI tools, and ending up with broken code and no idea how to fix it. 'AI [tools] will do everything for you—including fuck up,' Yegge says. 'You need to watch them carefully, like toddlers.' The fact that AI can produce results that range from remarkably impressive to shockingly problematic may explain why developers seem so divided about the technology. WIRED surveyed programmers in March to ask how they felt about AI coding, and found that the proportion who were enthusiastic about AI tools (36 percent) was mirrored by the portion who felt skeptical (38 percent). 'Undoubtedly AI will change the way code is produced,' says Daniel Jackson, a computer scientist at MIT who is currently exploring how to integrate AI into large-scale software development. 'But it wouldn't surprise me if we were in for disappointment—that the hype will pass.' Jackson cautions that AI models are fundamentally different from the compilers that turn code written in a high-level language into a lower-level language that is more efficient for machines to use, because they don't always follow instructions. Sometimes an AI model may take an instruction and execute better than the developer—other times it might do the task much worse. Jackson adds that vibe coding falls down when anyone is building serious software. 'There are almost no applications in which 'mostly works' is good enough,' he says. 'As soon as you care about a piece of software, you care that it works right.' Many software projects are complex, and changes to one section of code can cause problems elsewhere in the system. Experienced programmers are good at understanding the bigger picture, Jackson says, but 'large language models can't reason their way around those kinds of dependencies.' Jackson believes that software development might evolve with more modular codebases and fewer dependencies to accommodate AI blind spots. He expects that AI may replace some developers but will also force many more to rethink their approach and focus more on project design. Too much reliance on AI may be 'a bit of an impending disaster,' Jackson adds, because 'not only will we have masses of broken code, full of security vulnerabilities, but we'll have a new generation of programmers incapable of dealing with those vulnerabilities.' Learn to Code Even firms that have already integrated coding tools into their software development process say the technology remains far too unreliable for wider use. Christine Yen, CEO at Honeycomb, a company that provides technology for monitoring the performance of large software systems, says that projects that are simple or formulaic, like building component libraries, are more amenable to using AI. Even so, she says the developers at her company who use AI in their work have only increased their productivity by about 50 percent. Yen adds that for anything requiring good judgement, where performance is important, or where the resulting code touches sensitive systems or data, 'AI just frankly isn't good enough yet to be additive.' 'The hard part about building software systems isn't just writing a lot of code,' she says. 'Engineers are still going to be necessary, at least today, for owning that curation, judgment, guidance and direction.' Others suggest that a shift in the workforce is coming. 'We are not seeing less demand for developers,' says Liad Elidan, CEO of Milestone, a company that helps firms measure the impact of generative AI projects. 'We are seeing less demand for average or low-performing developers.' 'If I'm building a product, I could have needed 50 engineers and now maybe I only need 20 or 30,' says Naveen Rao, VP of AI at Databricks, a company that helps large businesses build their own AI systems. 'That is absolutely real.' Rao says, however, that learning to code should remain a valuable skill for some time. 'It's like saying 'Don't teach your kid to learn math,'' he says. Understanding how to get the most out of computers is likely to remain extremely valuable, he adds. Yegge and Kim, the veteran coders, believe that most developers can adapt to the coming wave. In their book on vibe coding, the pair recommend new strategies for software development including modular code bases, constant testing, and plenty of experimentation. Yegge says that using AI to write software is evolving into its own—slightly risky—art form. 'It's about how to do this without destroying your hard disk and draining your bank account,' he says.
