Weekly mortgage rates, monitored by Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS), decreased to 5.14 percent for the week ending August 27, 2009. The 30 year fixed rate mortgage average was up .02 percent from last week’s 5.12 percent, but still well below last year's rate of 6.40 percent. 15 year fixed rate mortgages also decreased from last week’s 4.56 percent to 4.58 percent.

Five-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages averaged 4.67 percent this week, with an average 0.6 point, down from last week when it averaged 4.57 percent. A year ago, the 5-year adjustable-rate mortgages averaged 6.03 percent.

One-year Treasury-indexed adjustable-rate mortgages averaged 4.69 percent this week with an average 0.6 point, unchanged from last week when it averaged 4.69 percent. At this time last year, the 1-year adjustable-rate mortgage averaged 5.33 percent.

"Long-term mortgage rates were barely changed this week, remaining historically low, which is helping to sustain a high level of affordability in the home-purchase market," said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac vice president and chief economist." Low rates contributed to existing home sales rising for the fourth consecutive month to an annual pace of 5.24 million in July, the most since August 2007, according to the National Association of Realtors®.

"Similarly, new home sales rose for the fourth month in a row to 0.4 million, the strongest pace since September 2008, the Commerce Department reported. The sales gain helped to reduce the number of new unsold houses on the market to the lowest amount since March 1993. In addition, house prices in June rose nationally for the second consecutive month, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency's purchase-only house price index."

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