⏳ Daily Mortgage Rates LIVE – 12/05/2025 – 15-Year vs 30-Year Loans

Close out the week with us LIVE as we share today’s Daily Mortgage Rates and break down 15-Year vs 30-Year Loans.

We’ll explain how each term impacts monthly payments, total interest, and equity growth, plus why some homeowners prefer the lower payments of a 30-year term while others choose the faster payoff of a 15-year loan.

Join the conversation, leave comments, and ask questions throughout the stream!

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Check out all episodes of Daily Mortgage Rates LIVE at https://themortgagecalculator.com/Page/Daily-Mortgage-Rates-LIVE-Video-Podcast

The Mortgage Calculator is a licensed Mortgage Lender (NMLS #2377459) that specializes in using technology to enable borrowers to access Conventional, FHA, VA, and USDA Programs, as well as thousands of Non-QM mortgage loan program variations using alternative income documentation!

Using The Mortgage Calculator proprietary technology, borrowers can instantly price and quote thousands of mortgage loan programs in just a few clicks. The Mortgage Calculator technology also enables borrowers to instantly complete a full loan application and upload documents to our AI powered software to get qualified in just minutes!

Our team of licensed Mortgage Loan Originators can assist our customers with Conventional, FHA, VA and USDA mortgages as well as access thousands of mortgage programs using Alternative Income Documentation such as Bank Statement Mortgages...

Transcript

Today we'll check out all of our live rates for our standard programs and then I will go into a deep dive on a very common question for many borrowers out there. What's the difference between a fifteen year and a thirty loan? Can we get the rates down? How do those compare?

And I have some examples for a actual specific listing that we can pull up side by side and compare and see how that makes a difference for a standard scenario. So let me go ahead and get started for today and go ahead and switch my screen here. Now, before we get started, we usually wanna check out the ten year treasury that's typically one of the best indicators for rates overall, especially when we compare, QM, non QM, j, USDA. We're comparing everything as a whole. Rates will generally track with the ten year treasury here.

And you see we had some movement over the five days, but I always wanna put in perspective here that we are still at one year lows which is amazing. So great opportunity for everybody out there shopping. Now let's check out some cool live rates here. So we switch into our live rates page. We always have this updated live in real time for our best options.

It's gonna be for a standard scenario, a single family home, 500,000 purchase, 300,000 loan amount. This corresponds to 60% loan to value, $7.64, 40% debt to income. That way we can compare all the different programs we offer. And you'll see here today, I have a specific scenario where we can take it to the maximums. What's rate option here today for a conventional loan?

What you think of when you think of a standard mortgage, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, coming in today, 5.875 rate, are 6.111. And we'll typically compare that for our standard borrower to an FHA option. FHA allows more leniency on credit issues and a higher open to income ratio, but does have upfront and yearly mortgage insurance that is required. Rates today come in at 5.125, but with those additional costs, final APR comes in at six point o two, which is beating conventional today, which is a little bit unusual. So that's amazing.

We'd love to see when, things are a little bit, different than expected. Now if our borrowers qualify for VA for our eligible vets, active service members, and surviving spouses, we can offer our VA option as low as 5.25 rate. Final APR is 5.5 today with all of the fees included there. So when you compare that to FHA, much less fees there for our vets. That's why even though the rate is a little bit lower for FHA, the final APR is what you wanna use to compare, and it's a lot lower overall for our veteran.

And our final, standard option, quote unquote here, USDA for our property in the USDA eligible areas. Those are typically the rural areas. And for our properties are eligible and our borrowers that are eligible under the income guidelines there, we can offer USDA as low as 5.125. That final APR comes in at 5.802 with all of the fees included. So our borrowers typically shopping in those areas would be comparing USDA to FHA and which you can see USDA offers a little bit better overall option typically in those scenarios if it is eligible.

Now where we love to shine here at the mortgage calculator, we offer a little bit outside the box scenarios. That's where our non QM optoc options come in. So if our borrower doesn't qualify for conventional or FHA, perhaps they're self employed and we need to use bank statements, ten ninety nine, p and l statements, etcetera, we can use alternative documentation here under this program, and you see here rates are nearly identical, 5.875 rate. A little bit higher on the final APR comes in at 6.145, but very comparable to conventional there. And I have some examples today as well.

And we can use our non QMALT lock options for investment for investment property rates come in today as low as 6% there. Finally, PR, 6.321. And compare that to conventional for an investment property. Our rates today come in same rate, 6%. Finally, PR, a touch cheaper there.

Finally, PR, 6.311. And our favorite options here at the mortgage calculator are DSCR for investment properties. No income or employment needed. We simply use the rents from the rental property here to determine a DSCR or debt service coverage ratio. If the cover the expenses, that's a ratio over one, which is what we use for all our examples.

Our three year prepayment, which is pretty standard for these programs, comes in today at 5.999 rate. Finally, it goes 6.258. And we can add a five year prepayment to sweeten the deal here at 5.875 rate, and that final APR comes in at 6.181. Both of those options actually be conventional for investment property. That's, because we're able to add that prepayment penalty in there as well.

We can do it with no prepayment penalty for investment don't want one or our states some states do not allow it. The rates are very comparable still 6% rate. Finally, PR 6.321, just a touch higher than conventional. And we have second mortgage options, HELOC options, commercial options, all kinds of options listed here on the page. But let's get into today's topic and compare thirty year versus fifteen year options for some standard scenarios.

So I pulled up a random listing here, in my area. It looks like a townhome, just a standard single family home. Just, kind of a narrow lot, it looks like. But a great option here where it would sneak in under all the loan limits we would need to compare different options here. So a standard home, 575,000 rough price here.

So if our borrower wanted to purchase this home, we're going to compare conventional FHA and non QM for thirty first fifteen year options. So first up, our conventional options are typical going to request to put 5% down payment here. So that's what we use for our example, for a primary home. And this allows us to compare the options. There is going to be PMI required on this, but the lowest rate option, 5.75 or a 2.5% discount point cost.

And our par or zero option here, 6.49. And you'll see that's the 5% down option. And the PMI comes in at one forty one when our borrower has an estimate score of 760. Now let's compare that to our fifteen year option. So let me go back to the rates.

Remember, we had as low as 5.75. See how we can buy it down when we go to fifteen years. So, when we do a fifteen year option, we can get the rates a little bit lower, 4.999 or 4.99, sorry, at a cost of 2.5. So same cost there for a little bit lower rate. And the par rate option here, 5.99 for no cost.

And Steve still does require PMI. The PMI is gonna be the same, but the payment's gonna be a little higher at the fifteen year amortization with the same 5% down payment here. So the same, PMI. Now if our borrower needs to use an FHA option, we do have that option as well. So our use FHA typically ask for the, lowest option for the standard program here, 3.5% down payment.

So that's a little bit of an adjustment here in this scenario, but, same everything else, so we can compare side by side. You can see the lowest, rate option, that we pulled up today, five three seven five rate at a cost of 1.853. But we do have some options, with a little bit of letter credit. So we have an option at 6% rate, to get point nine eight three back towards closing costs. So a few different options here to pull up our standard FHA option.

And remember, FHA does require that MI and that upfront, MI as well. Now let's compare our FHA option. Year to the fifteen years. So changes up a little bit. So when we have the fifteen year option, we can get the rates down to 4.875 at a cost of 2.288.

And the, option here, $8.07 5 for just 0.22 back towards closing cost here. So definitely can get it down a little bit lower, but, obviously, the monthly payment is gonna be a little bit higher and the monthly payment with the mortgage insurance is gonna be higher. So definitely some options to compare there. Now, again, at the mortgage company, we love to offer alter scenarios. So here, let me pull up our non QM option.

So if our borrower needed to use, alternative docs, this is one of the options. This is a full doc example because that will be comparable to FHA and conventional. If we just need to use non QM for some reason here, we can put full doc you have 10% down payment. There is no PMI required for NonQM. So a little bit different quote here you'll see.

Obviously, the rates are typically a little bit higher for NonQM, especially if we're foregoing the maximum of 90% LTV. But some interesting options here. There are some letter credits. So rates as low as 6.875 on our standard for the year for 2.25 discount points and costs. And we have an option here at 7.499 rate that affords point one two five back in closing costs.

And percent down payment for that same scenario here using that same seven sixty credit score. Now if we want to compare the fifty year option here, we can see that we can get the rates a little bit lower just as usual. So standard 10% down payment, the typical maximum request here on QM option. And let me expand these. You'll see our lowest rate option we can get it down to is 6.75 for 2.5 discount points.

And the option here at 7.499 allows us point three seven five back towards closing costs. So here in non QM, not that much of a difference. Definitely wouldn't recommend our borrower, unless it's their prerogative to have lower amortization. But if they're looking to save on rate just by switching to a it doesn't make that big of a difference here on OQM. But we can see here with FHA, it does make a pretty big difference there.

And also with our conventional options here, we can get it down quite a bit when we compare side by side. So definitely cool to compare those options, and it is a very common request, from our borrowers out there. They're always wondering what will be the best option for their scenario. So hopefully that helps explain the difference between the rates. Overall, the ten year treasury tracks all the rates in general overall, but every different loan program, the fifteen years, the thirty years, you have to track different mortgage security indexes and everything.

So it's great to pull up some specific examples there. So, again, if anybody has any questions and needs a full loan estimate with the full fees for any of the options we showed today, today, please check out our website. We'll get you connected with one of our licensed loan officers, and they'd be happy to help out. So good luck everybody out there house hunting. Friday.

Thanks.