Mortgage Rates
National 30-Year Refinance Mortgage Rates
Fact Checked
Today's National 30-Year Refinance Mortgage Rates
30-Year Refinance Interest Rate, APR, Monthly Payment, and Total Interest Cost
There are two refinances, and they are not priced the same. A rate-and-term refinance replaces your loan with a new one of the same size, to change the rate or the term. A cash-out refinance replaces it with a larger one and hands you the difference in cash. The cards below hold the loan amount constant and let only the program and the purpose vary, so a rate-and-term quote and a cash-out quote for the same borrower sit side by side. Read the APR beside the rate: the rate sets your payment, but the APR is the number that carries the fees, and on a refinance the fees are the larger half of the decision.
30-Year Refinance Rates by Loan Program
LIVERates last updated: Aug 26, 2026
- Today's Refinance Rates
- What These Rates Assume
- vs National Average
- What Affects Your Rate
- When It Makes Sense
- Break-Even Calculator
- FAQ
What These Rates Assume
Every rate table is built on an assumed borrower, and almost none of them say who that borrower is. Ours does. The quotes above are GoRealo's own lender pricing on a single-family primary residence, at each program's standard published tier, on a single loan amount held constant across every card so that only the program and the purpose vary. That loan amount comes from the home value and equity figures in the widget, and you can change them. GoRealo is licensed to lend in Florida.
Four things the cards do not tell you. The rates carry no credit-score and no loan-to-value condition - they are the standard un-banded rows, so the note the widget prints underneath about a 780 credit score is not a property of these numbers (the payment, however, is calculated at the equity figure shown). The payment is principal and interest only: it excludes property taxes, insurance and any mortgage insurance, so the FHA card understates the true monthly cost, because FHA carries an annual mortgage insurance premium for the life of most loans. The BEST badge marks the lowest APR, not the cheapest loan for you - on a refinance it lands on the VA card, and VA lending is open only to veterans and serving military, so for most readers the badged product is not an option at all. And these are advertised rates, not an offer of credit: they change daily, they are not a commitment to lend, and your own rate depends on the underwriting factors set out below.
National 30-Year Refinance Mortgage Rates vs National Average Locked Mortgage Rates
Compare Same-Term Refinance APR, Monthly Payment, Buying Power, and Total Interest Cost
The usual benchmark for a page like this is the national average locked rate, published from lenders' own lock desks. It has a limitation that matters here and that nobody states: the published benchmark is not split by loan purpose. We checked both the lender feed and the market feed behind this page on 14 July 2026; each returns a single figure per program and per term, with no field distinguishing a purchase from a refinance. So a like-for-like reading of a refinance rate against a refinance benchmark is not available today, from us or from anyone else, and we would rather say so than print a comparison that quietly comes out flattering.
That gap is not academic. It is the single biggest source of misinformation on this topic. On 14 July 2026 we collected the advertised 30-year refinance rate from the rate pages of eleven national lenders and publishers. The range ran from 6.000% to 7.000% - a full percentage point, worth roughly $263 a month on a $400,000 loan. Most of that spread was not the market. U.S. Bank's refinance page disclosed in its own small print that the figures shown were "the current rates for the purchase of a single-family primary residence"; one lender quoted refinances at 60% loan-to-value while quoting purchases at 80%, which makes the refinance look cheaper than it is; another silently dropped the loan amount by $75,000 between its purchase and refinance tabs. The spread was mostly an assumption swap, not a price difference.
The comparison that is available, and that actually changes your decision, is between the two refinances. Since 2022, cash-out has been the majority of every single refinance quarter - 61.7 percent of all refinances in 2025Q3, and above half for sixteen consecutive quarters, according to the FHFA National Mortgage Database, New Residential Mortgage Statistics (loan-count basis). When rates rise, refinancing does not stop. It changes species.
| Rate-and-term refinance | Cash-out refinance | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Replaces your loan with one of the same size | Replaces it with a bigger one; you keep the difference |
| What it costs | The cheaper of the two | The dearer. But the adjustment is charged mainly as a fee in points, not always as a higher interest rate, which is why a cash-out quote can show the same note rate and still cost you more. Read the APR, not the rate |
| How the premium is set | Standard loan-level price adjustments | A published fee ladder. Fannie Mae's cash-out grid has no zero cell: even the strongest borrower pays 0.375%, and at 80% LTV the adder runs 1.375% to 5.125% by credit score |
| Monthly payment | Usually falls, if the rate falls | Often rises, because the balance rose |
| Borrowing power | None. You are not raising the debt | Limited. Fannie's cash-out price grid stops at 80% LTV and publishes no adjustment above it (the binding maximum itself is set in Fannie's Eligibility Matrix, not in the price grid) |
| Total interest cost | Falls only if the rate drop clears the reset (see below) | Rises on both counts: bigger balance, dearer money |
Fee figures from the Fannie Mae Loan-Level Price Adjustment Matrix dated 01.28.2026, pages 3 and 4. These are one-off charges expressed in points, levied on top of the rate, not the rate itself.
What Affects National 30-Year Refinance Mortgage Rates
Credit Score, LTV, Home Equity, Loan Purpose, Occupancy, Property Type, and Rate Lock
A refinance rate is not one price. It is a base price plus a stack of adjustments, most of them published, and they are the reason two people reading the same advertised number are quoted differently. Note that several of these are charged as fees in points at closing rather than as a higher interest rate, which is why two quotes can share a rate and differ in cost.
- Loan purpose. The adjustment this page exists to explain. Taking cash out is priced above leaving the balance alone, on the same loan, to the same borrower, on the same day - and the ladder above shows by how much.
- Credit score. The adjustment ladder is steep at the bottom and flat at the top. On Fannie's cash-out grid at 80% LTV, moving from the top credit tier to the lowest multiplies the fee roughly fourfold.
- Loan-to-value and home equity. The same variable read from two ends. Equity is what you own; LTV is what you owe. On a conventional cash-out, Fannie's price grid stops at 80% LTV altogether.
- Discount points. The advertised rate is usually a rate somebody bought. 67.7 percent of 2023 refinances paid discount points, at a median of $3,902, per the CFPB's Data Point: 2023 Mortgage Market Activity and Trends (December 2024, Table A2). When a rate looks unusually low, the first question is what it cost to get there.
- Occupancy and property type. A primary residence prices best. A second home, an investment property, a condominium or a multi-unit building each carry their own adjustment, and they stack.
- Rate lock. A quote is not a price until it is locked, and the lock has an expiry date. Locks are priced by their length, so ask what the lock costs and when it runs out.
- Program. Conventional, FHA and VA price the same borrower differently, and the cheapest headline rate is not always the cheapest loan once mortgage insurance and funding fees are counted.
Shopping several lenders costs you nothing in credit terms. The CFPB confirms that multiple mortgage credit checks inside a 45-day window are recorded as a single inquiry, however many lenders you ask.
When a 30-Year Refinance Makes Financial Sense
Payment Savings, Break-Even Period, Closing Costs, Payoff Timeline, and Total Interest Cost
Start with the uncomfortable part: for most people reading this, the answer is that it does not. Of the 51.4 million mortgages outstanding in the United States, 66.7 percent are already priced below 5 percent, and only 22.1 percent carry a rate of 6 percent or higher (FHFA National Mortgage Database, Outstanding Residential Mortgage Statistics, 2026Q1, loan-count basis). If you are in the two-thirds, no rate-and-term refinance available today will help you, and any page that tells you otherwise is selling something.
For the 22 percent who can benefit, the industry offers one rule: divide your closing costs by your monthly saving, and that is your break-even in months. That rule is wrong, and it is wrong in the direction that always favours doing the deal, because it ignores the largest thing that happens when you refinance. You restart the amortization clock. A 30-year fixed front-loads interest so heavily that a fresh 30-year at a lower rate can cost more total interest than the higher-rate loan you already have.
Here is the drop you actually need, just to break even on total interest, starting from a 30-year at 7 percent - and this is calculated with zero closing costs, the most generous assumption possible.
| Years into your loan | New 30-year rate that merely breaks even | Rate drop you need |
|---|---|---|
| 1 year | 6.77% | 0.23 percentage points |
| 3 years | 6.30% | 0.70 percentage points |
| 5 years | 5.83% | 1.17 percentage points |
| 7 years | 5.37% | 1.63 percentage points |
| 10 years | 4.67% | 2.33 percentage points |
| 15 years | 3.51% | 3.49 percentage points |
The famous rule of thumb - refinance when you can drop your rate a full point - expires about four years into a 7 percent loan. From that starting rate, the month at which a one-point drop stops being enough arrives in month 52. (The threshold moves with the starting rate: on a 5 percent loan the rule survives about six years.) After that point the rule is not merely imprecise; it points the wrong way, and the error grows every month you hold the loan.
Monthly Payment Difference
The easy number, and the one every lender leads with. Illustration: a $400,000 loan at 7 percent, seven years in, refinanced into a fresh 30-year at 6 percent, with the CFPB's median refinance cost of $7,329 added to the balance. The payment falls $431 a month, a 16 percent cut. Nothing about that figure is untrue. It is simply not the whole trade.
Break-Even Period
The naive rule puts that refinance at 17 months. In reality there are two break-evens: it moves ahead at month 30, peaks around month 131, and then falls behind again at month 214. Congress found the calculation so easy to abuse that it wrote a maximum into statute: a VA interest-rate-reduction refinance must recoup its costs within 36 months through lower payments (38 U.S.C. 3709(a)(2)). Note the limit: subsection (d)(1) exempts cash-out refinances from the test entirely.
Total Interest Cost
The same illustrative refinance, held to term, costs $60,920 more in total interest than keeping the original loan - despite the full point of rate reduction. The first payment on the new, cheaper loan is 83.4 percent interest, against 79.9 percent on the old one. A lower rate made the payment more interest-loaded, because the clock went back to the beginning.
Payoff Timeline
Resetting to a fresh 30-year pushes the payoff date out by the seven years already paid. This is not hypothetical: 83.5 percent of refinancers go into a new 30-year, while the 15-year share has collapsed to 12.8 percent (FHFA NMDB, 2025Q3, loan-count basis). The fix costs you nothing in fees. Keep your original payoff date: the same lender, the same 6 percent, the same $7,329, amortized over the 276 months you had left. The payment is still $174 a month lower than keeping the loan, and it saves $55,254 in interest instead of costing $60,920. The trade-off is honest: you give up the deeper $431 monthly cut to get it.
Two regulators have already written this into their rulebooks. HUD relaxes its rate test on an FHA streamline refinance when you shorten the term: instead of requiring a combined rate at least 0.5 percentage points below the old one, it asks only that the new combined rate be below the old one, provided the new payment does not rise by more than $50 (Handbook 4000.1, pages 426-427). And the VA's statutory 36-month recoupment measures the break-even in cash, not in optimism.
None of which means never refinance. The opposite error is real and expensive: Keys, Pope and Pope found in the Journal of Financial Economics (2016) that about 20 percent of households who should have refinanced had not, at a median present-value cost of $11,500 each (NBER Working Paper 20401). The point is not to avoid the decision. It is to make it on the total interest and the payoff date, not on the payment alone.
Run Your Own Refinance Break-Even
Enter your current loan, your remaining term and the rate you have been quoted. The calculator compares your remaining balance over your remaining term against the new loan, and shows the lifetime interest on both, so the reset is visible rather than hidden. To test the fix described above, set the new loan term to "Keep my current payoff date" and watch the lifetime interest change.
This calculator models a rate-and-term refinance: the new loan amount equals your current balance. Closing costs are assumed paid at closing, not financed into the new loan, and cash-out refinancing is not modelled. Payments shown are principal and interest only.
Enter your loan details to see whether refinancing works on your numbers.
Refinancing into a new full-length term restarts the amortization schedule. A lower rate can still mean more interest over the life of the loan.
Shown for information. A lower balance is the mirror image of a higher monthly payment, so it is not a saving and it is not part of the net benefit below.
Zero unless you enter tax rates under Tax Information. It applies only if you itemize and deduct your mortgage interest; most filers take the standard deduction and get no tax benefit from it. Florida has no state income tax. This row is informational and is not included in the net benefit below.
Break-even is the number of months your monthly payment reduction takes to repay the closing costs.
Mortgage interest rates shown are based on a 780 credit score with 20% down payment or equity. FHA, VA, and USDA rates may vary slightly for different credit profiles.
Refinance Analysis Report
Generated:
Current Loan Information
| Original Price | -- | Original Rate | -- |
| Original Loan | -- | Original Term | -- |
| Months Paid | -- | Current Balance | -- |
Refinance Details
| New Rate | -- | New Term | -- |
| Closing Costs | -- | Analysis Period | -- |
Comparison Summary
| Keep Current | Refinance | Difference | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly Payment | -- | -- | -- |
| Total Interest (Holding Period) | -- | -- | -- |
| Total Interest (Lifetime) | -- | -- | -- |
| Lifetime Cost (interest + closing) | -- | -- | -- |
| Balance at Sale | -- | -- | -- |
| Net Benefit (holding period) | -- | ||
Recommendation
Run the calculator to generate a recommendation.
Figures shown on this page are illustrations based on the assumptions stated, not quotes. Advertised rates change daily and are not a commitment to lend. Your rate, costs and eligibility depend on underwriting. Closing-cost figures cited are the CFPB's 2023 median total loan costs for a refinance, which exclude prepaid items and escrow.
Frequently Asked Questions
They are live in the cards at the top of this page, drawn from GoRealo's own lender pricing for conventional, FHA and VA on a 30-year term and a single loan amount held constant across every card. The cards carry two tabs, because a refinance has two forms and each is priced separately: rate-and-term, which keeps your balance the same, and cash-out, which increases it. Read the APR next to the interest rate; the rate drives your payment, while the APR absorbs the lender charges that Regulation Z counts as finance charges. That matters on a cash-out, where much of the extra cost is charged as a fee in points rather than as a higher interest rate. These are advertised rates, not an offer of credit: they change daily and are not a commitment to lend.
Not as cleanly as most pages imply. We checked the lender feed and the market feed behind this page on 14 July 2026: each returns one figure per program and per term, with no field separating a purchase from a refinance. There is therefore no published refinance benchmark to read a refinance rate against, and any site presenting one is comparing unlike things. It is worth knowing that some large lenders publish a refinance rate that is really their purchase rate - U.S. Bank's refinance page said so in its own small print on the day we looked - and others quote refinances at a lower loan-to-value than they quote purchases, which flatters the refinance number. Compare lender to lender on a Loan Estimate for the same scenario, rather than against an average.
It usually lowers it, and that is the least interesting thing about it. A payment can fall for two quite different reasons: because the interest rate dropped, or simply because the balance is being stretched back over a fresh 360 months. The second is not a saving. It is a deferral, and it is why a refinance can reduce your payment while increasing what the loan costs you in total. If you take a cash-out refinance, the payment will often rise instead, because the balance itself has grown. Judge the offer on total interest and the payoff date, not on the monthly figure alone.
The base market rate sets the floor, and a stack of published adjustments does the rest. The biggest one on a refinance is the purpose: taking cash out costs more than leaving the balance alone, and Fannie Mae's cash-out price grid contains no zero entry at any credit score or loan-to-value. Beyond that, your credit score, your loan-to-value, the occupancy of the property, the property type, the program and the length of your rate lock each carry their own adjustment, and they accumulate. Discount points matter too: most refinancers buy their rate down, so an advertised rate is often one somebody paid a fee to reach.
When the rate drop is large enough to survive the reset of the amortization schedule, and when you will hold the loan long enough to recover the closing costs. Both halves matter. The common rule that a one-point drop justifies a refinance is only reliable in the first few years of a loan; the further in you are, the larger the drop has to be, because a new 30-year sends you back to the start of a schedule that charges most of its interest early. The most reliable way to keep a refinance honest is to hold your original payoff date rather than restart the clock. Run your own figures in the calculator on this page.
Hold everything constant except the thing you are testing. Use the same loan amount, the same property value and equity, the same occupancy, the same credit tier and the same lock period at every lender, then compare the Loan Estimates rather than the advertised rates. The rate cards on this page work the same way: the loan amount is fixed, so only the program and the refinance purpose vary. Shopping several lenders costs you nothing on your credit file, because mortgage credit checks made inside a 45-day window are counted as a single inquiry.