This article is by staff writer William Cowie.
Mortgage interest rates have been steadily dropping, and they’ve been doing that for a very long time — so long that most people can’t even remember rates higher than, say 7 or 8 percent. How short our memories are: Those with gray hair remember that rates haven’t always been this low. This chart, compiled from Freddie Mac data, shows how the interest rate for 30-year fixed rate mortgages climbed as high as 18 percent not so long ago: