The real estate downturn that dominated 2009 leaves many on unfamiliar ground at tax time so here are some useful tax tips:

On Foreclosure: “Homeowners here are really getting screwed. If they do what’s called a deed in lieu of foreclosure, their credit gets slammed, just like a foreclosure, and then, even if the bank forgives you, the IRS does not. Say you borrowed $500,000 and the house now is only worth $300,000. You would get a deficiency 1099 from the IRS for that difference. Doesn’t make sense, but that’s the rule.”

“The idea was so people wouldn’t walk away from their homes, but the government never thought we would be in this situation. You are taxed as if you had $200,000 in a capital gain sale, at 15%. In certain situations you can get relief on that, but you have to prove hardship and everything else.”

On Rental losses: For rental real estate, let’s say you make decent money, say $150,000 of adjusted gross income. If you have rental losses, you can’t find a renter because there is so much available property out there now, you can’t take a loss, but you can carry it forward to a year you do not have that AGI.”

On Loss on an inherited home: “For non-spouse heirs, if you inherit a house from your parents, you don’t have to pay any capital gains at all. Say the house is worth $500,000. The IRS views that $500,000 as the price you can sell it for right away and take no gain. If you sell two years later and the value goes down $200,000, you can take that loss. There’s no limit on that, for rental property or primary residences.”

On Refinancing costs: “You may be able to write off some costs, escrow and so on, depending on how you itemize your taxes. But mostly with a refinance you cannot write it off. However, if you take out a home equity line of credit, anything above your acquisition line of credit up to $100,000, you can deduct the interest on it. You can do anything you want with that, put it in the bank, buy a boat, as long as it is under a $100,000 indebtedness.”

On Creative use of home equity: “With a lot of clients, we are using their home equity line of credit, converting from a regular IRA, which is taxable when you take it out, to a Roth IRA, which is not. You have to pay the income tax when you make the conversion. If you do that in 2010 you can stretch that tax over two years an that’s the only year you’re going to be able to do that. You don’t owe it until 2012. That’s a great break the IRS has been giving people. So we are taking unused home equity lines of credit, separating that from the home value, getting the money out of there, then using that cheap money to pay the tax (and it’s tax deductible) instead of paying it out of their own money, their life savings.”

On Buying a home: “People can still get the federal $8,000 home buyers’ tax credit for first-time home buyers (or as long as you haven’t owned a house in two years). If you sell and go buy another home, that now has a tax credit of $6,500. This is good through April of this year and you have to close by June.”

E. Scott Reckard
The Los Angeles Times

The typical rate offered by lenders on 30-year mortgages slipped back below 5% this week, Freddie Mac said Thursday.

The mortgage giant’s weekly survey found that the average rate available on 30-year fixed-rate loans fell to 4.97%, down from 5.05% last week, with an average of 0.7% of the loan balance paid in upfront fees known as points.

The 30-year rate has bumped around the 5% level since September, falling to a record low of 4.71% in a Freddie survey in December. This year it has been above 5% in six of the weekly surveys and below seven times.

Not since the 1950s have rates remained so low for so long, said Greg MacBride, a senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com, citing data from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The historically low rates have been engineered by the federal government in response to the deep recession.

Freddie Mac’s survey, conducted Monday through Wednesday, asks lenders to report for each loan type the interest rate they are offering, along with the points they are charging for that rate, for borrowers with good credit and at least a 20% down payment or home equity.

The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage this week averaged 4.33% with an average of 0.7% in points, down from 4.4% a week ago.

The five-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate loan, which has a fixed rate for the first five years, averaged 4.11% with 0.6% of the loan balance in points. The rate averaged 4.16% a week earlier.

Mortgage professionals say well-qualified borrowers often negotiate slightly better deals than lenders’ reported offering rates.

By Alejandro Lazo
The Los Angeles Times

In another sign that the U.S. housing recovery might be on a shaky foundation, the number of homes placed under sales contract fell 7.6% in January, according to a national index.

The National Assn. of Realtors said Thursday that its pending home sales index, a forward-looking indicator based on contracts signed in January, fell to 90.4 from an upwardly revised 97.8 in December.

That remains 12.3% higher than January 2009, when it was 80.5.

The group blamed the weather for the month-over-month decline.

“January pending sales, though still higher than one year ago, remain much lower than expected given that a large number of potential buyers are eligible for the expanded home buyer tax credit,” Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the Realtors group, said in a statement. “Moreover, the abnormally severe and prolonged winter weather, which affected large regions of the U.S., hampered shopping activity in February.”

The January results were the lowest since April. The biggest month-over-month drop came in the West, where the index declined 13.2%. The index fell 8.9% in the Midwest, 8.7% in the Northeast and 2.1% in the South.

If you plan to take out a mortgage or refinance any time soon, you might want to hear this blunt message from federal officials: Don’t fly blind. When you’re shopping among competing lenders for the best loan terms and fees, make sure you know which quotes come with a guarantee and which do not.

Depending upon how loan officers provide their quotes upfront — on an informal “work sheet” that carries no federal consumer protections or on a new, three-page “good-faith estimate” mortgage shopping tool that comes with rock-hard guarantees — there could be a world of difference.

A loan officer might quote you fees that are low-balled by hundreds of dollars on an informal work sheet to get your business. But if the quotes are made on a good-faith estimate, they’ve got to be accurate because, under federal rules that took effect Jan. 1, any significant excesses must come out of the lender’s own wallet at closing.

This month the Department of Housing and Urban Development brought together representatives of the highest-volume mortgage lenders in the country — who originate a combined 80%-plus of all new home loans — to review the agency’s reformed good-faith-estimate and closing documents.

Among the issues discussed: the widespread use of informal work-sheet estimates to quote loan shoppers mortgage rates and closing fees. HUD does not object to lenders using work sheets to give casual shoppers a rough idea of what they’ll pay. But the agency says it wants lenders and loan officers to make clear to customers that work sheets are not good-faith estimates, and they are not guaranteed.

At the meeting with major lenders, HUD Deputy Assistant Secretary Vicki Bott warned that under no circumstances can work-sheet quotes be issued to a mortgage applicant “in lieu of a GFE.” Once a consumer supplies the essential application information — Social Security number, property address and estimated value, among other data — lenders must issue a binding-cost good-faith estimate.

Also, loan officers cannot refuse to provide a good-faith estimate to an applicant who requests one, nor can they tell applicants that they can receive a GFE only if they commit to moving forward with their company to obtain the mortgage.

“By no means can they say you are bound to me as your lender” following issuance of a cost-guaranteed good-faith estimate, Bott said. Why? Because the whole concept of the revised GFE is to enable home buyers and refinancers to shop intelligently, with confidence in lenders’ estimates.

You can now get cost-guaranteed quotes on a good-faith estimate from one lender, then take them and compare them with GFE quotes from competitors. The new form contains itemized boxes allowing comparison of up to four lenders’ quotes — including interest rates, loan fees, prepayment penalties and total settlement expenses.

The good-faith estimate also ties upfront estimates to later charges at closing, and encourages borrowers to check line by line for any discrepancies. The form explains which fees come with zero tolerance for changes between upfront estimates and closing — generally the lender’s own loan fees and local transfer taxes — and which fees allow a 10% tolerance for changes higher than the estimate, such as certain title and closing-related services.

Here is how to be a smart mortgage shopper using the new federal rules to your advantage. If you are seriously looking for the best deal and are prepared to supply basic application information, as for a good-faith estimate by name. If you’re merely shopping for generic rate quotes, work sheets are find as long as you understand their limitations.

Beware of look-alike ploys and substitutes. Bott told lenders to make sure their work sheets do not “look like a GFE” and that they “be clear [to the consumer] that they are not GFEs.”

Some work sheets that have been used by lenders since Jan. 1 resemble good-faith estimates but have titles such as “estimated settlement costs” at the top of the page. Others indicate on the bottom of the form that the work sheet “is not a GFE,” but the typeface is so small it’s barely legible.

Finally, be aware that federal law requires that a good-faith estimate be issued within three days of any application.

By Kenneth R. Harney
The Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Washington - Go ahead. Break the chains. Stop paying on your mortgage if you owe more than the house is worth. And most important: Don’t feel guilty about it. Don’t think you’re doing something morally wrong.

That’s the incendiary core message of a new academic paper by Brent T. White, a University of Arizona law school professor, titled “Underwater and Not Walking Away: Shame, Fear and the Social Management of the Housing Crisis.”

White contends that far more of the estimated 15 million U.S. homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages should stiff their lenders and take a hike.

Doing so, he suggests, could save some of them hundreds of thousands of dollars that they “have no reasonable prospect of recouping” in the years ahead. Plus the penalties are nowhere near as painful or long-lasting as they might assume, he says.

“Homeowners should be talking away in droves,” White said. “But they aren’t. And it’s not because the financial costs of foreclosure outweigh the benefits.”

Sure, credit scores get whacked when you walk away, he acknowledges. But as long as you stay current with other creditors, “one can have a good credit rating again — meaning above 660 — within two years after a foreclosure.”

Better yet, homeowners can default “strategically”: Buy all the major items they’ll need for the next couple of years — a new car, even a new house — just before they pull the plug on their current mortgage lender.

“Most individuals should be able to plan in advance for a few years of limited credit,” White said, with minimal disruptions to their lifestyles.

What kind of law school professor advice is this? Aren’t mortgages legal contracts? In so-called anti-deficiency such as California and Arizona, mortgage lenders have limited or no legal rights to pursue defaulting homeowners’ assets beyond the house itself, White said. In other states, lenders may decide that it is not worth the legal expense to pursue walkaways, or consumers may be able to find flaws in the mortgage documents, disclosures or underwriting to challenge the original contract.

The main point, he said, is that too often people’s emotions get in the way of clear financial thinking about mortgages, turning them into what he calls “woodheads” — individuals who choose not to act in their own self-interest.” Most owners are too worried about feelings of shame and embarrassment after a foreclosure, and ignore the powerful financial reasons for doing so.

Buttressing these emotions is a system that White labels “the social control of the housing crisis” — pressures and messages continually sent to consumers by the “social control agents,” namely banks, government and the media. The mantra that these agents — all the way up to President Obama — pound into owners’ heads, White said, is that “voluntarily defaulting on a mortgage is immoral.”

Yet there is an inherent imbalance in the borrower-lender relationship that makes this morality message unfair to consumers, White says: Banks set the rules during the housing boom, handing out home loans with no down payments, no income checks and inflated appraisals. Now that property values have dropped 20% to 50% in many areas, banks have been slow to modify troubled mortgages and reluctant to reduce principal debts.

Only when homeowners cut through the emotional fog and default strategically in large numbers, White argues, will this inequitable situation be seriously addressed.

How does White’s 52-page manifesto go over with mortgage lenders? Predictably, not well. Officials at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — investors who fund the bulk of all new mortgages in the country — disputed White’s characterization of how quickly after foreclosure a walkaway borrower can obtain a new loan. It’s not three years, they said, it’s a minimum of five years, absent extenuating circumstances such as medical or employment problems that caused the foreclosure.

“Borrowers who walk away from their mortgage obligations face serious consequences,” including severely depressed credit scores for extended periods, said Brian Faith of Fannie Mae.

In addition, he said, “there’s a moral dimension to this as homeowners who simply abandon their homes contribute to the destabilization of their neighborhood and community.”

By E. Scott Reckard
The Los Angeles Times

Phil Kelly had 18 more months to go before the fixed rate on his $2.5-million mortgage became adjustable.

But when Kelly, a former computer executive living in Rancho Santa Fe, learned he could knock his interest rate down by a full percentage point by refinancing, he went for it.

“It’s always tough to pick the exact bottom or top of anything.” Kelly said. “But I think this rate is about as low as you’re going to get.”

Rates on jumbo mortgages - loans of more than $729,750 in counties with the highest-cost housing - shot up during the financial crisis as lenders and loan investors shunned anything tainted with even a whiff of higher risk. Rates on big mortgages were especially high relative to this on smaller loans.

But in a boon for borrowers in California’s expensive housing markets, the jumbo-loan market is starting to return to normal.

Two weeks ago, the average interest rate on 30-year fixed-rate jumbos dropped to 5.79%, a nearly five-year low, according to rate tracker Informa Research Services of Calabasas. It edged up to 5.88% on Tuesday, still very attractive by historical standards. The average is down from well above 7% in late 2008.

Rates are even lower on so-called hybrid adjustable mortgages, on which the rate is fixed for, say, five years and then adjusts annually.  Kelly’s new loan is a five-year hybrid adjustable identical to his old one, except that he’s paying about 5%, down from 6%.

Banks are also relaxing slightly some of their requirements for jumbo loans. That’s an encouraging sign because the market for jumbos, in contrast with the rest of the mortgage business, isn’t being propped up by Uncle Sam.

The lower rates and somewhat easier terms reflect newfound confidence among banks in the housing market. That’s because, by definition, jumbos are too big to be bought by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae or to be insured by the Federal Housing Administration. Plus, the private market for mortgage-backed bonds dried up when the meltdown hit. So lenders making jumbo loans these days must be willing to take the risk of keeping them in their portfolios.

The maximum amounts for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae “conforming” mortgages, and for FHA mortgages, are set by Congress. The cutoff for single-family homes was $417,000 from 2006 until February 2008, when lawmakers increased it temporarily to $729,750 in certain high-cost areas, including Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties. Conforming loans top out at $500,000 in Riverside and San Bernardino counties and $697,500 in San Diego County.

The increased upper limits, which have been extended until the end of this year, have created a three-tier system in expensive areas, mortgage professionals say: loans of up to $417,000, which are the easiest to obtain and carry the lowest rates; “conforming jumbos” from $417,000 to $729,750, which are somewhat harder to get and have slightly higher rates; and true jumbos, with the toughest standards and highest rates.

In the boom years of 2005 and 2006, interest rates were typically no more than a quarter of a percentage point higher on jumbo loans than on conforming loans, according to Informa Research. That widened as the mortgage meltdown intensified and home prices dropped in late 2007. The spread ballooned to nearly 1.7 percentage points in early 2009 after the entire credit system froze.

But this year the rate spread has narrowed to less than a percentage point. It could shrink more if conforming-loan rates rise as expected after the Federal Reserve wraps up a $1-trillion-plus program to support the market for conforming loans next month.

In addition to lower rates, down-payment requirements are being relaxed in some cases. For example, to write a jumbo loan in coastal areas of Los Angeles and Orange counties, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage looks for a 20% down payment or that percentage of equity, down from 25% last year, said Brad Blackwell, a national mortgage sales manager at the lender.

The reason: Wells believes high-end home prices are stabilizing in those coastal counties. But the bank still requires higher down payments in the Inland Empire and other battered housing markets such as Florida, Nevada and Arizona, where prices for jumbo-size homes don’t appear to be stabilizing, he said.

Jumbo loans remain much harder to get than before the credit crunch and recession. Borrowers typically must have a credit score of at least 700, compared with boom-era minimums in the 600s, though Laguna Niguel mortgage broker Jeff Lazerson said at least one lender was again making sub-700 jumbos available.

What’s more, unless their down payments are very large, borrowers must provide evidence of high income, have sizable bank accounts as a cushion against the unforeseen and occupy the houses themselves.

But there are clear signs that the jumbo market has loosened. One is an increasing availability of “stated income” loans - those that don’t require proof of income - of as much as $2 million to borrowers with at least a 40% down payment, said mortgage broker Gary Bluman, owner of Real Estate Resources in Brentwood.

Also, instead of a true jumbo loan, some “piggyback” second loans are available again to help certain borrowers with 25% down payments pay for high-priced homes, Lazerson said.

Of course, adjustable, state-income and piggyback loans were big contributors to the mortgage meltdown. But such provisions are less risky if a borrower has 25% to 40% equity.

Despite the confidence in the market that such terms imply, lenders and mortgage investors are still dealing with piles of bad jumbos made during the boom.

Delinquencies of 60 days or more on prime jumbo loans that were packaged into securities jumped to 9.6% in January, up from 3.7% a year earlier, Fitch Ratings reported this month.

The jumbo delinquency rate in California climbed to 11.3% from 4.1% a year earlier.

For now, the jumbo market remains limited to the volume of loans that banks are willing and able to keep on their books. But there is hope for a return to private outside funding.

Although no jumbos have been turned into securities for at least two years, packages of delinquent jumbos have begun to be sold again to “vulture” investors, a sign that the secondary market for the loans may revive, said Michael Fratantoni, vice president of research at the Mortgage Bankers Assn.

“The ice sheet,” he said, “is starting to crack here and there.”

But January’s year-over-year increase to $271,500 is a 6.1% drop from December. Total sales climb about 1% from a year earlier.

Home sale prices in Southern California showed fresh strength in January, bouncing 8.6% from the same month one year earlier - a period when the market was inundated with steeply discounted bank-owned properties.

But compared with a particularly strong December, the median fell 6.1% to $271,500 in January, ending eight consecutive months of price appreciation or stability in the Southland, MDA DataQuick, a San Diego real estate research firm, said Tuesday.

The month-to-month decline was attributable in part to the higher percentage of cheaper Inland Empire homes that sold in January compared with December as buyers in pricier locales stopped searching during the holidays and investors and first-time buyers made up a larger share of shoppers.

“The [January] numbers reflect, for the most part, people who would be out shopping in the middle of the holidays anywhere from late November to early January,” DataQuick analyst Andrew LePage said. “So it doesn’t surprise me that the concentration shifts a little bit back toward investors and first-time buyers, who probably feel the most urgency to snag what they consider a deal. A lot of other potential buyers would have been focused on other things during the holidays.”

Results from the first two months of the year don’t typically provide indication of how the rest of the year will shape up, LePage cautioned.

But the mixed results come as Washington policymakers and experts intensely debate the future of the nation’s housing market. Many experts fear the market will suffer after the government ends a slew of policies intended to prop it up.

The Federal Reserve, for instance, plans next month to end a $1.25-trillion program that has helped keep interest rates at rock-bottom levels by purchasing mortgage bonds from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The Federal Housing Administration, which has backed mortgages for many first-time buyers, is expected to tighten its lending criteria later this year. And an extended federal tax credit of up to $8,000 for first-time home buyers and up to $6,500 for some current homeowners expires April 30.

Some analysts expect the market to get another boost as the tax incentive expiration nears. But as the federal measures unwind, the housing market will be weighed down by high joblessness and foreclosures.

“Beyond the spring, everything will depend on what is going to happen with those delinquencies. Are they going to turn into foreclosures or notices of default? And what are the banks going to do with them once they have them?” said Gerd-Ulf Krueger, principal economist at Housingecon.com. “There will be very significant pressure on the banks to behave reasonably…and then it is anybody’s guess what happens after the midterm election.”

Many real estate agents and experts are anticipating an early spring shopping season, given the tax credit and low interest rates, but say a lack of new foreclosures has slowed the sales pace. A total of 15,361 homes sold in Southern California in January, an increase of only 0.9% over the same month a year earlier when the market for lower-end, bank-owned properties began to take off, DataQuick said.

“We have more buyers than we have inventory,” Lakewood Realtor David Emerson said. “Everything has been skewed partly by the tax credit, so it is an abnormal year, and I think it will still continue to be.”

Sales dropped 31.2% in January compared with December. A decline between those two months is normal; on average, sales have fallen 28.4% in that period every year since DataQuick statistics began.

The number of foreclosures as a percentage of the resale market ticked up slightly in January. Foreclosure resales made up 42.1% of all sales of previously owned homes in Southern California, up from 39.6% in December but down from 56.4% in January 2009.

Source: The Los Angeles Times.

About 4 million U.S. homeowners are 90 days or more delinquent on their loans or in foreclosure proceedings, Moody’s Economy.com says. A federal loan modification program is helping a relative few.

Reporting from Washington - Experts fear that a new wave of foreclosures will hit this year as prolonged unemployment makes it difficult for millions of homeowners to pay their mortgages - and many of them aren’t likely to get much help from a federal program aimed at keeping them in their houses.

Banks participating in the Home Affordable Modification Program, announced a year ago this week by President Obama, have been slow to turn temporarily reduced mortgage payments into permanent ones.

“The overarching sense is that the mortgage modification process has not worked that well,” said Bert Ely, an independent banking consultant.

Obama administration officials acknowledge that the $75-billion program, which offers banks cash incentives to reduce payments, has had growing pains, and they said they were considering revisions to make it more effective.

Still, the program is expected to show continued progress when data from January are released Wednesday after a strong push by Treasury Department officials to get banks to make more of the modifications permanent.

For example, Bank of America Corp., the nation’s largest servicer of mortgages, said Tuesday that it had increased the number of permanent mortgage modifications to 12,700 last month from 3,200 in December. BofA said an additional 13,700 permanent modifications were in their final stage.

But that’s a drop in the bucket considering that BofA holds about 1 million mortgages that are at least 60 days delinquent. About 4 million homeowners nationwide are 90 days or more delinquent on their mortgages or in foreclosure proceedings, according to Moody’s Economy.com, which analyzes data from credit reporting company Equifax Inc.

Trial modifications and other delays have kept many of those mortgages out of foreclosure, but by the end of this year, 2.4 million borrowers are expected to lose their homes, said Celia Chen, a housing economist at Economy.com.

That would be up from 2.1 million foreclosures and short sales last  year and five times the annual numbers earlier in the decade.

It’s unclear when those distressed properties would hit the market, but their large numbers are likely to push home prices back down this year, to a bottom in the fourth quarter, Chen said. And that would make things worse for the 25% of homeowners who already owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth.

The biggest blows will be felt in California, Florida, Nevada and other states where home prices have dropped the most and the ranks of struggling homeowners have swelled.

As of December, 11.4% of California homeowners were 90 days or more late on their loans, according to First American CoreLogic, a Santa Ana real estate data firm. That compares with a delinquency rate of 8.4% nationwide.

Despite an increasing number of foreclosure-prevention efforts, lawmakers and community advocates say they haven’t seen enough improvement.

“Outreach isn’t happening,” said Hyepin Im, president of Korean Churches for Community Development, a Los Angeles group that has sought to help hundreds of Asian American borrowers who are struggling to avery foreclosure.

At the outset, banks didn’t screen borrowers before giving them trial modifications, she said. “Then at the end they don’t give very clear answers why they’re not getting permanent modifications. […] There’s very little transparency.”

A report last week by Moody’s Investors Service called the Obama administration modification program’s effect “underwhelming.” But administration officials said the program was on track to reduce payments for 3 million to 4 million homeowners through 2012.

As of Dec. 31, the program had helped get 787,231 home loans modified for three months and had helped make an additional 66,465 modifications permanent.

Officials noted that not all homeowners are eligible - the program is only for owner-occupied homes, and excludes a variety of mortgages, including jumbo loans. And the administration continues to make changes, including a requirement added last month that homeowners document their income before a trial modification is granted.

But the program continues to draw criticism. Banks have complained they’ve had trouble getting homeowners to provide the necessary documents. Frustrated homeowners have complained of bureaucratic runarounds from their servicers. Federal watchdog agencies have criticized the program. And last month the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee announced an investigation.

Source: The Los Angeles Times.

The average interest has remained just above or just below 5% so far this year, but the end of Federal Reserve mortgage bond purchases is expected to bump up rates about half a percentage point.

Average interest rates for traditional 30-year fixed mortgages have fallen below 5% again, Freddie Mac said Thursday.

The giant mortgage buyer’s weekly survey, conducted Monday through Wednesday, pegs the average rate nationally at 4.97%, with 0.7% of the loan balance on average paid in upfront charges, or points.

Last week, 30-year rates averaged 5.01%. That continues a trend so far this year in which the average has come in either just above or just below 5%.

The survey asks 125 lenders across the country the rates they are offering to borrowers with good credit and a 20% down payment or at least 20% equity for those refinancing their home loans.

The approaching end of Federal Reserve purchases of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae mortgage bonds is expected to result in rate increases later this year. The Mortgage Bankers Assn. estimates the typical interest rate might rise by half a percentage point.

If the average 30-year fixed rate rose half a point to 5.5%, that would still be unusually low by historical standards.

Nonetheless, such an increase would make home purchases more expensive and could put an end to a continuing mini-boom in refinancings, which have accounted for about two-thirds of home loan applications this year.

In other findings from the latest Freddie Mac survey:

• Last year at this time, 30-year fixed mortgages averaged 5.16%.
• Fifteen-year fixed home loans this week averaged 4.34% (with 0.6% of the loan amount in upfront fees), down from 4.4% last week. A year ago, 15-year loans averaged 4.81%.
• Five-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages averaged 4.19% this week, with 0.6% in points, down from 4.27% last week and 5.23% a year ago. The rate on this type of loan is fixed for five years before becoming variable.
• One-year Treasury-indexed adjustable-rate mortgages averaged 4.33%, up from 4.22% last week but well below an average 4.94% a year ago. The rate on these loans adjusts annually.

The average rate on 15-year fixed mortgages rose to 4.40% from 4.39%. Five-year adjustable-rate mortgages averaged 4.27%, up from 4.25%. Rates on one-year adjustable-rate mortgages fell to 4.22% from 4.29%.

The rates do not include add-on fees known as points. The nationwide fee for loans in Freddie Mac’s survey averaged 0.7 point for 30-year and 15-year mortgages. It averaged 0.6 point for five-year loans and 0.5 point for one-year loans.