Source: Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA)
Full name: "National Average Contract Mortgage Interest Rate For the Purchase of Previously-Occupied Homes By Combined Lenders" or the "National Average Mortgage Contract Interest Rate For Major Lenders on the Purchase of Previously-Occupied Single Family Homes"
Please note: The NMCR was discontinued by the FHFA on May 29, 2019 "due to dwindling participation" in its Monthly Interest Rate Survey (MIRS). The final value of the series is for April 2019. FHFA designed a replacement for the NMCR, but only for existing, outstanding loans. Originally called "PMMS+" and now called the "MIRS-Transition Index", or "MIRS-TI" for short. The FHFA notes that "The MIRS Transition index is intended to be used in lieu of the discontinued index for currently outstanding loans, and not as a reference rate on newly-originated adjustable-rate mortgages."
MIRS-TI is based on Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS), but the FHFA adjusts the value to account for differences in the methodology for NMCR and MIRS-TI.
The National Average Contract Mortgage Rate was derived from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Monthly Interest Rate Survey (MIRS). From October 1989 through July 2008, the survey was conducted each month by the Federal Housing Finance Board, which was the latest incarnation of the former Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB), which was formed in 1932.
The series is the average contract rate reported by a sample of mortgage lenders (savings and loan associations, savings banks, commercial banks, and mortgage companies) for loans closed during the first 5 working days of the month up through October 1991, and for the last 5 working days of the month since November 1991.
The rate is based on conventional fixed- and adjustable-rate loans on previously occupied non-farm single-family homes. The series trails interest-rate trends both because of the processing time and the fact that the rate on a loan closed often reflects a rate commitment made two or three months earlier.