If you’re playing the waiting game with mortgage rates, you may not want to wait much longer.
A new study from Haus, the home-finance startup created by Uber co-founder Garrett Camp, examined what role seasonality, loan size, credit scores and other factors play in the mortgage rates that lenders offer borrowers.
The study found that much like the housing market itself the mortgage market ebbs and flows with the seasons. And January, as it turns out, is the best time of year to get a new home loan on average.
In January, lenders offer a discount of nearly 20 basis points compared to the time period between June and October when rates are typically the highest for the year. The cooler weather, in general, brings out lower mortgage rates, with December and February being the next-cheapest months based on the Haus study.
“While we can’t say for exact certainty why rates are lower in January than in the summer months, we can speculate that competition for customers matter,” Ralph McLaughlin, chief economist and senior vice president of analytics at Haus, said in the report.