Mortgage rates are low!

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Mortgage rates are low! How low? 

Consider the graph below. It shows several ways of looking at U.S. weekly average 30-year fixed mortgage rates.

Let's break it down starting at the bottom.

This chart shows weekly average rates since 1971. It's a standard line chart with some gradient shading corresponding to the level of rates. The shading might be a bit gratuitous, but it helps tie the chart together.

Move up to the top right.

This chart is a boxplot grouped on year. Each dot is a week and the boxes show the interquartile range (25th to 75th percentile). Note that the dots are color coded the same as the line plot.

Finally, we can group on decade.

By grouping on decade we can see just how low recent mortgage rates are relative to historical averages. Prior to 2010, rates had not fallen below 4% (at least in the 40+ year history of Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey). But since 2010, rates have spent about half of the time below 4%.

For R code to make graphs like this check out this post https://lenkiefer.com/2017/10/19/mortgage-rates-are-low/.