Posted To: Mortgage Rate WatchMortgage rates were lower today for the average lender, but just how low remains a matter of great debate. To be fair, there’s no active debate raging behind the scenes. Rather, there are a few weeks’ worth of news headlines claiming “all-time low mortgage rates,” and then there is the objective truth (which is a bit different from those news headlines). We’ve talked about the discrepancy quite a bit recently (here is the most recent and most thorough discussion ). It has to do with 2 shortcomings of popular rate surveys: stale/limited data and a “purchase-only” focus. Stale data can cause problems, but it shouldn ‘t result in 2 consecutive weeks of erroneous conclusions about all-time low rates. One caveat here is that the recently noted all-time lows aren’t much lower than the previous instances…(read more)Forward this article via email:  Send a copy of this story to someone you know that may want to read it.