Media reports have been declaring record lows when it comes to mortgage rates. Newspapers, websites and television have been broadcasting how much the rates for home mortgages have gone down over the past twelve months. So it begs the question, are mortgage rates really much cheaper now?

If we dig deeper in to the facts, we will find that rates indeed have gone down. The details of these are in a report that Freddie Mac releases regularly called the Primary Mortgage Market Survey which details the average mortgage rate as well as fee structure. It is the data in this report that the news media dishes out to the public.

However, what we don’t see is that the fees for these home mortgages has actually increased. While mortgage rates according to the survey are now .38% cheaper at year end versus the previous all-time low in January 2008, average fees went up by .40% in that same period.

In this case, mortgage rates are cheaper but not entirely so.

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