Mortgage and refinance interest rates today, August 3, 2025: Rates remain high
While rates have been fluctuating up and down recently, there's still been a clear increase compared to 2024. According to Zillow, 30-year and 15-year fixed mortgage rates have both gone up over 40 basis points. In July 2024, the 30-year rate was 6.12%, and the 15-year rate was 5.35%. Even so, if you are looking to buy a house, it could benefit you to lock in a mortgage now, as rates are not expected to plummet in the near future.
Dig deeper: 2025 housing market — Is it a good time to buy a house?
Current mortgage rates
Here are the current mortgage rates, according to the latest Zillow data:
30-year fixed: 6.60%
20-year fixed: 6.36%
15-year fixed: 5.76%
5/1 ARM: 6.91%
7/1 ARM: 7.12%
30-year VA: 6.22%
15-year VA: 5.58%
5/1 VA: 5.94%
Remember, these are the national averages and rounded to the nearest hundredth.
Learn more: 8 strategies for getting the lowest mortgage rates
Current mortgage refinance rates
These are today's mortgage refinance rates, according to the latest Zillow data:
30-year fixed: 6.66%
20-year fixed: 6.09%
15-year fixed: 5.39%
5/1 ARM: 7.32%
7/1 ARM: 6.75%
30-year VA: 6.03%
15-year VA: 5.67%
5/1 VA: 6.03%
Again, the numbers provided are national averages rounded to the nearest hundredth. Mortgage refinance rates are often higher than rates when you buy a house, although that's not always the case.
Read more: Is now a good time to refinance your mortgage?
Refinance interest rates
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Monthly mortgage payment calculator
Use the mortgage calculator below to see how various mortgage terms and interest rates will impact your monthly payments.
Our free mortgage calculator also considers factors like property taxes and homeowners insurance when determining your estimated monthly mortgage payment. This gives you a more realistic idea of your total monthly payment than if you just looked at mortgage principal and interest.
30-year vs. 15-year fixed mortgage rates
The average 30-year mortgage rate today is 6.60%. A 30-year term is the most popular type of mortgage because by spreading out your payments over 360 months, your monthly payment is lower than with a shorter-term loan.
The average 15-year mortgage rate is 5.76% today. When deciding between a 15-year and a 30-year mortgage, consider your short-term versus long-term goals.
A 15-year mortgage comes with a lower interest rate than a 30-year term. This is great in the long run because you'll pay off your loan 15 years sooner, and that's 15 fewer years for interest to accumulate. But the trade-off is that your monthly payment will be higher as you pay off the same amount in half the time.
Let's say you get a $300,000 mortgage. With a 30-year term and a 6.60% rate, your monthly payment toward the principal and interest would be about $1,916, and you'd pay $389,752 in interest over the life of your loan — on top of that original $300,000.
If you get that same $300,000 mortgage with a 15-year term and a 5.76% rate, your monthly payment would jump to $2,493. But you'd only pay $148,711 in interest over the years.
Fixed-rate vs. adjustable-rate mortgages
With a fixed-rate mortgage, your rate is locked in for the entire life of your loan. You will get a new rate if you refinance your mortgage, though.
An adjustable-rate mortgage keeps your rate the same for a predetermined 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 remaining 23 years of your term.
Adjustable rates typically start lower than fixed rates, but once the initial rate-lock period ends, it's possible your rate will go up. Lately, though, some fixed rates have been starting lower than adjustable rates. Talk to your lender about its rates before choosing one or the other.
Dig deeper: Fixed-rate vs. adjustable-rate mortgages
How to get a low mortgage rate
Mortgage lenders typically give the lowest mortgage rates to people with higher down payments, great or excellent credit scores, and low debt-to-income ratios. So, if you want a lower rate, try saving more, improving your credit score, or paying down some debt before you start shopping for homes.
Waiting for rates to drop probably isn't the best method to get the lowest mortgage rate right now. If you're ready to buy, focusing on your personal finances is probably the best way to lower your rate.
How to choose a mortgage lender
To find the best mortgage lender for your situation, apply for mortgage preapproval with three or four companies. Just be sure to apply to all of them within a short time frame — doing so will give you the most accurate comparisons and have less of an impact on your credit score.
When choosing a lender, don't just compare interest rates. Look at the mortgage annual percentage rate (APR) — this factors in the interest rate, any discount points, and fees. The APR, which is also expressed as a percentage, reflects the true annual cost of borrowing money. This is probably the most important number to look at when comparing mortgage lenders.
Learn more: Best mortgage lenders for first-time home buyers
Current mortgage rates: FAQs
What is a mortgage interest rate at right now?
According to Zillow, the national average 30-year mortgage rate for purchasing a home is 6.60%, and the average 15-year mortgage rate is 5.76%. But these are national averages, so the average in your area could be different. Averages are typically higher in expensive parts of the U.S. and lower in less expensive areas.
What's a good mortgage rate right now?
The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate is 6.60% right now, according to Zillow. However, you might get an even better rate with an excellent credit score, sizable down payment, and low debt-to-income ratio (DTI).
Are mortgage rates expected to drop?
Mortgage rates aren't expected to drop drastically in the near future, though they may inch down now and then.
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TechCrunch
2 minutes ago
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All instantly deleted, because a client asked for my email. One warning. No appeal. They didn't care about the community. Just their 3% cut. Dribbble is… — Gleb Kuznetsov (@glebich) July 29, 2025 Shortly after his social media post, Dribbble users expressed their shock and anger over the decision, crediting Kuznetsov as one of their biggest inspirations and lamenting that the platform would make such a misguided move. Dribbble, meanwhile, says Kuznetsov was actually warned multiple times that he was violating the new rules and the email was the final notice. Dribbble's pivot to a marketplace The issue has to do with a more recent policy change first announced on March 17, 2025. Techcrunch event Tech and VC heavyweights join the Disrupt 2025 agenda Netflix, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital — just a few of the heavy hitters joining the Disrupt 2025 agenda. They're here to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don't miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch Disrupt, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech — grab your ticket now and save up to $675 before prices rise. Tech and VC heavyweights join the Disrupt 2025 agenda Netflix, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital — just a few of the heavy hitters joining the Disrupt 2025 agenda. They're here to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don't miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch Disrupt, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech — grab your ticket now and save up to $675 before prices rise. San Francisco | REGISTER NOW In an email shared in March with Dribbble's some 750,000 approved designers — meaning those who are authorized to communicate with others on the platform — the company said it was no longer allowing designers to share their contact information with prospective clients until after their client sent payment through its platform. The company positioned this change as one meant to protect designers from non-payment, as well as one that allows Dribbble to continue to sustain its business. The announcement was also posted to social media and the company blog. Image Credits:Dribbble However, Kuznetsov claims that non-payment isn't a very common problem, and really, this update is about Dribbble attempting to take a larger cut of designers' business. Dribbble doesn't dispute that. Before the policy change, Dribbble made money in one of two ways. Starting in September 2024, Dribbble began pivoting to a marketplace that connected designers and clients. Designers could communicate freely on the platform and then either share a 3.5% revenue cut on clients they converted, or they could pay for a Pro subscription to skip the rev share. In March, the company tightened the rules further, saying that anyone finding clients on Dribbble would need to offer the platform a cut of their revenue. 'It went from it was optional to use our transactional features to it was required for non-advertisers to use our transactional features, if they were on Dribbble, to find clients,' explains Dribbble CEO Constantine Anastasakis, in an interview with TechCrunch. 'If a user is on Dribbble to find inspiration or to get feedback on their work, or to talk shop with their peers, none of this affects them,' he added. Image Credits:Dribbble The exec, who joined the company after working at direct-to-consumer lender Lower, video marketplace Pond5 (exited to Shutterstock), and freelancer marketplace Fiverr, was hired last April to pivot Dribbble into a marketplace. While the company is profitable under parent company Tiny, it's still a small 20-person team and isn't reliant on venture backing to serve its 7.5 to 10 million monthly unique visitors. 'Dribbble was something that really accelerated our business dramatically back in the day,' Kuznetsov told TechCrunch. 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Post to Coast: New York Post plans a California newspaper
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CNN
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How Trump decided to fire a little-known statistician, sparking conspiracy theories about government data
President Donald Trump was fuming about the July jobs report signaling a significant slowdown in the economy when he recalled one of his simmering resentments: the statistician overseeing the tabulation of the monthly figures was appointed by former President Joe Biden. Unlike Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, whom Trump has been criticizing for months, the president has the authority to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So last Friday, he did — an unprecedented decision that sparked the latest White House controversy and cascading fallout over injecting politics into government economic data. 'I was thinking about it this morning, before the numbers that came out,' Trump told reporters Friday. 'I said, 'Who is the person that does these numbers?'' That person, whom Trump suddenly made a household name after publicly firing her, is Erika McEntarfer. 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I did the right thing.' With that, a fresh conspiracy theory was born at the White House, as the president said without evidence that McEntarfer had 'rigged' the monthly jobs report. McEntarfer, who has not responded to comment, has spent decades as a government statistician, working at the Census Bureau and across the bureaucracy, surveying and studying labor and economic figures. But in a January speech to the Atlanta Economic Club, she talked about the importance of producing timely economic data. 'I've been interested in economic measurement for a very long time,' McEntarfer said. 'But like everyone who lived through the last five years, I've developed a deeper appreciation for the importance of timely economic data.' Her canning was the latest example of Trump moving to discredit facts inconvenient to his political narrative, or to dismiss those responsible for compiling them. Mostly lost in the controversy was discussion of the actual state of the US labor market, which is now flashing warning signs amid uncertainty over Trump's tariffs. Trump's decision to dismiss McEntarfer drew immediate condemnation from economists of all stripes, who used descriptions like 'damaging,' 'authoritarian' and 'banana republic' to assess the move. 'I don't know that there's any grounds at all for this firing,' said William Beach, whom Trump selected during his first term to head up the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 'And it really hurts the statistical system. It undermines credibility in BLS.' Officials said the aspect of the report that most angered Trump was the major revisions down from previous months, which he has claimed publicly, without evidence, were politically motivated. 'That's what set him off,' one White House official told CNN, adding: 'He saw the revisions and knew something was awry for it to be changed so drastically. And this isn't a first-time thing. Considering so many companies make decisions based off these numbers it's an issue that needed to be fixed.' Far from being a sign of political scam, however, the revisions are a standard part of the monthly jobs report. Low survey responses can make the report more challenging to estimate, so BLS continues to collect the payroll data as it's reported and it revises the data accordingly. Earlier this year, Trump had a similar conversation with his closest officials regarding whether he could fire Powell. Those advisers warned him against doing so, telling him such a move was not only legally questionable but had broader implications for the economy given Powell's role as being independent from the executive branch. But many of those same officials argued to Trump that removing McEntarfer, who serves as the pleasure of the president, was a move Trump was justified to make, despite BLS being considered an impartial agency. White House officials, dispatched on television to defend the action, offered varying explanations, none of which clearly offered proof of Trump's claim the jobs numbers were 'rigged' or 'concocted' to make him look bad. Trump declared Sunday it would only be a matter of days before he nominates a new commissioner to lead the agency, which he referred to as the 'statistician.' Left unsaid was how, precisely, Trump's hand-selected appointee would remedy the various problems the president's team sees in how the bureau collects and compiles jobs numbers. Traditionally, leaders of the agency have been economists selected from other government positions, think tanks or universities. None have been household names, either before their appointment or during their tenure. Officials said Trump was seeking a 'highly qualified' individual to take over and 'modernize' the bureau's methods, but whoever emerges as Trump's selection will undoubtedly face scrutiny during their confirmation process in the Senate, where even some Republicans have questioned Trump's abrupt move to dismiss the incumbent commissioner. One of the White House officials said Trump, as of Monday, had not yet made a decision on McEntarfer's replacement. The president's top advisers, including chief of staff Susie Wiles and the leaders of his economic team — including Director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, among others — will play a major role in deciding the next commissioner, the official said. Beach, appearing on CNN's 'State of the Union,' said whomever replaces McEntarfer would struggle to gain credibility, even though Trump's stated goal was to restore faith in the numbers. 'Suppose that they get a new commissioner, and this person, male or female, are just the best people possible, right? And they do a bad number. Well, everybody's going to think, well, it's not as bad as it probably really is, because they're going to suspect political influence,' he said. 'So this is damaging. This is not what we need to have.' The president's decision did not appear to generate widespread internal backlash among his advisers, even as outside economists of both parties decried the move and warned it could erode confidence in critical economic numbers. 'It is my job to support the president in this issue, and I do support him. We have to ensure for the American people that we can trust this data. It's influential, it changes markets, it changes investments,' said Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer in an interview on Fox Business on Monday. Only a few hours before Trump announced he was dismissing McEntarfer on Friday, Chavez-DeRemer said the jobs report 'provides further evidence that the American people are seeing real progress.' Other members of the president's economic team endorsed his decision. Many were quick to link issues with the jobs figures with Powell's decision to keep interest rates steady — to the persistent annoyance of Trump — suggesting policymakers at the Fed weren't receiving accurate information with which to make their decisions. In multiple interviews since Friday, Hassett has claimed that partisanship had seeped into the jobs reports, without providing any evidence to back up the claim. He said in appearance on Fox News that 'data can't be propaganda,' though did not provide any details that could substantiate how McEntarfer or the hundreds of statisticians at the agency could have cooked the numbers. On Monday, he suggested on CNBC that the Bureau of Labor Statistics was just another hotbed of entrenched opposition to Trump. 'All over the US government, there have been people who have been resisting Trump everywhere they can,' he claimed. Like most Trump administration officials, Hassett had spent the first Friday of most months this year touting the months jobs reports, saying the steady rate of hiring was indicative of a strong economy. Trump himself posted frequently when the jobs reports showed six-figure gains, never questioning the figures when they appeared to show a robust labor market. 'GREAT JOB NUMBERS, STOCK MARKET UP BIG! AT THE SAME TIME, BILLIONS POURING IN FROM TARIFFS!!,' Trump posted in June regarding that month's report from BLS. It was only after Friday's dismal report, that he elected to order McEntarfer's firing. The immediate furor over the decision to fire her dwindled a bit over the weekend, even though several members of Congress expressed concern before leaving Washington for their August recess. 'If the president is firing the statistician because the numbers are unreliable, now that would be good to know,' said Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican. 'But if the president is firing the statistician because he doesn't like the numbers – but they are accurate – then that's a problem.' Economists and statisticians defended McEntarfer, saying her dismissal would create a troubling mistrust of critical economic data. In her January speech in Atlanta, she acknowledged growing challenges in compiling the monthly jobs report because the response rate to surveys from employers and employees is no longer as robust as it once was. 'Our goal at BLS is to modernize the official statistics for the 21st century,' McEntarfer said, 'and to try and get them on a sustainable path for the future.' Six months later, she was fired.
