Mortgage rates fall again

Friday, Jan. 3, 2003 | 9:53 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Mortgage rates began the new year the same way they ended the old -- by hitting a new low.

The average interest rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage fell to 5.85 percent for the week ending today, down from 5.93 percent in the previous week, Freddie Mac said Thursday in its weekly nationwide survey of mortgage rates.

This week's rate was the lowest since the mortgage giant began tracking 30-year mortgage rates in 1971. The rate for this week and last week both surpassed the previous records in the survey of 5.94 percent set in the middle of November.

Records that reach back earlier than Freddie Mac's put this week's 30-year mortgage rate at the lowest level since the early 1960s.

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