LendingTree also reports rise in credit scores in most metros
The spread between the lowest median APR offered by mortgage lenders and the highest rate increased last week.
That’s according to the LendingTree Mortgage Rate Competition Index which analyzes rates offered by lenders on its platform. The spread for purchase loans increased from 0.23 a year ago to 0.66 last week and was up 0.03 from a week earlier.
“Homebuyers could have seen median lifetime savings of $30,617 in interest on a $300,000 loan by comparison shopping for the best mortgage rates last week, the most since we started tracking the data in 2013,” says LendingTree chief economist Tendayi Kapfidze.
For refinances the spread was 0.71, up from 0.67 a week earlier.
Credit scores are improving nationwide
A separate study from the online loan marketplace found that borrowers’ credit scores improved between Q1 2017 and Q1 2018 in most of 50 metros analyzed.
For a third, there was an improvement of more than 20 points with 3.5% improving their score by over 100.
Jacksonville, Indianapolis, Denver and Tampa saw the highest rate of rising credit scores while Virginia Beach, Va., Los Angeles and Birmingham, Ala., had the lowest rate.
The most dramatic rise in scores was in San Jose with the highest rates of people who raised their score by more than 75 points and 100 points.
