August 20, 2025
📊 Rate Update: Will Mortgage Rates Stay in the 6’s?
Mortgage rates continue to move in step with the 10-year Treasury yield, and that bond market connection remains one of the best guides for what comes next. The two don’t line up perfectly—mortgage rates tend to run a couple of points higher—but they consistently travel in the same direction. In the 2010s, the gap (or “spread”) between the two was closer to 1.5 percentage points. Recently, it’s been closer to 2.5, which explains why home loan rates feel elevated even when Treasurys aren’t pushing all-time highs.
Economists largely agree that Treasury yields won’t swing wildly in the next five years. Deloitte projects the 10-year yield holding near 4.5% through the rest of 2025 before easing slowly toward 4.1% by 2027, staying there into 2029. Goldman Sachs forecasts a similar track, expecting the yield to remain around 4.1% through 2027. The Congressional Budget Office is a touch lower, calling for 4.1% in 2025, 4% in 2026, and around 3.9% through 2029.
When you apply the spread to those projections, mortgage rates are likely to settle in the mid- to upper-6% range for years to come. By 2027, most estimates suggest 30-year fixed rates will land between 6.2% and 6.4%. That’s steady, not dramatic—certainly not the rapid decline many buyers were hoping for.
Could surprises change the picture? Absolutely. A major recession, a sharp shift in Federal Reserve policy, or a narrowing of the spread could pull rates down faster. On the other hand, inflationary pressures or a widening spread could keep rates higher for longer. What nearly every forecast agrees on is that the ultra-low 3% rates of the pandemic era are not in the cards without a major economic shock.
For now, the outlook suggests stability rather than a sudden drop. If the numbers fit your budget, it may be smarter to act on today’s rates than to wait for a big swing that may never come.
