Over the past 45 years, interest rates on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage have ranged from as high as 18.63% in 1981 to as low as 3.31% in 2012. Mortgage rates today remain at historical lows, with over 60% of mortgage holders paying rates between 3.00% and 4.90%. We used interest rate data from Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS) to examine historical mortgage rates and the factors that have impacted their downward trend. |