In the United States, when people talk about mortgages, they almost invariably are talking about the 30-year fixed-rate conventional mortgage.
It wasn't always that way. In fact, it wasn't until the Housing Act of 1954 became law that the 30-year fixed rate mortgage became mainstream. The law's "combination of federal insurance and full amortization requirements made the extended timeline financially safe for banks". Soon after, the 30-year fixed rate conventional mortgage became the default for both lenders and home buyers.
But it wasn't until much later that federally-backed agencies like Freddie Mac began keeping regular track of what the average monthly interest rate was for homes bought in the U.S. with these mortgages. As important as they are for prospective American homeowners, the historical data for these mortgages only goes back to April 1971. Freddie Mac, officially known as Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, has maintained weekly data for mortgages extending back to that month. The government-sponsored enterprise also used to report monthly averages for mortgage rates from April 1971 forward, but discontinued the practice after December 2022.
And yet, because housing sales and prices are reported on a monthly basis, it's incredibly useful to have mortgage rates averaged over the period of a month. Since Freddie Mac isn't doing that job any more, we took it over and have made it publicly available.
It's built into the following interactive chart, which we've just updated to visualize 55 years worth of the average monthly interest rates for 30-year conventional mortgages in the U.S.
The average 30-year fixed-rate conventional mortgage was 6.33% in April 2026.
References
Freddie Mac. 30-Year Fixed Rate Mortgages Since 1971. [Online Database]. Accessed 15 May 2026. Note: Starting from December 2022, the estimated monthly mortgage rate is taken as the average of weekly 30-year conventional mortgage rates recorded during the month.
Image credit: Mortgage Payment Due date by alanharder.ca via Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0).
Labels: data visualization, real estate, tool
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