30-year fixed rates climb back above 5%
Mortgage rates are on the rise for the first time since the Federal Reserve's decision to purchase mortgage backed securities in November.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Interest rates on 30-year fixed rate mortgages rose after an 11 week streak of declines.
Government sponsored mortgage lender Freddie Mac said Thursday that fixed rates on 30-year mortgages averaged 5.12% for the week ending Jan. 22. That's up from last week when is averaged 4.96% but still below 5.48%, which is where the rate stood at this time last year.
This is the first time interest rates have risen since the Federal Reserve announced it would purchase $500 billion worth of mortgage backed securities on November 25, 2008.
"Fixed-rate mortgages followed bond yields and edged up this holiday week," said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac (FRE, Fortune 500) vice president and chief economist in a release on Thursday.
"However, over the first three weeks of 2009, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was an average 0.25 percentage points below its monthly average for December 2008. As a result, the number of mortgage applications for refinancing was roughly about 86 percent of all conventional loans over the same time period."
The 15-year fixed rate mortgage was also up this week, averaging 4.8%, compared with an average of 4.65% last week. But that's still still down from a year ago at this time, when the 15-year FRM averaged 4.95%.
One-year Treasury-indexed adjustable-rate mortgages (ARM) rose as well and averaged 4.92% this week, up from 4.89% last week. At this time last year, the 1-year ARM averaged 4.99%.
However, five-year Treasury-indexed ARMs continued to fall this week. The 5-year ARM averaged 5.24%, down from last week when it averaged 5.25%. 
