Current mortgage rates report for Jan. 12, 2026 | Will mortgage interest rates drop after the Jan…


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Current mortgage rates report for Jan. 12, 2026

Glen is an editor on the Fortune personal finance team covering housing, mortgages, and credit. He’s been immersed in the world of personal finance since 2019, holding editor and writer roles at USA TODAY Blueprint, Forbes Advisor, and LendingTree before he joined Fortune. Glen loves getting a chance to dig into complicated topics and break them down into manageable pieces of information that folks can easily digest and use in their daily lives.

The average interest rate for a 30-year, fixed-rate conforming mortgage loan in the U.S. is 6.138%, according to data available from mortgage data company Optimal Blue. That’s up approximately 2 basis points from the prior report, and down about 2 basis points from a week ago. Read on to compare average rates for a variety of conventional and government-backed mortgage types and see whether rates have increased or decreased.

Will mortgage interest rates drop after the January Fed meeting?

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The Federal Reserve issued an interest rate cut of 25 basis points in September 2025. Then another in the same increment in October and a third one by an identical amount in December. And mortgage interest rates largely responded positively, declining to 3-year lows, where they hovered in the final quarter of the year. Mortgage rates ended 2025 more than a full percentage point lower than where they started, too.

So, with another Federal Reserve meeting on the calendar for the end of January, homebuyers can comfortably predict another interest rate drop after that meeting, right? Unfortunately, the reality is more complicated than an automatic rate drop following the central bank's meeting. Ahead of the next meeting, then, it helps to know what to consider. This can better help determine the value of taking action now versus waiting for mortgage rates to decline further. 

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