Mortgage Rates

Why do mortgage rates seem kind of high? One answer is that in order to fund the rescue and the new government guarantees, our Treasury must sell more new Treasury securities to raise money. And the Treasury has to offer higher interest rates to sell them. On top of that, mortgage related bonds always trade at a slightly higher yield due to the prepayment and delinquency risk. Lastly, the cost of financing mortgages has increased for Freddie and Fannie due to the plan for the FDIC to back the newly issued, unsecured debt of some banks. Obviously by guaranteeing bank debt, the government is making that debt more attractive for investors, and consequently creating more competition for Fannie and Freddie when they look to sell their own securities. To compete for buyers, the mortgage giants will have to raise their own yields - and to pay for that they'll have to charge borrowers higher interest.