Last Monday, mortgage rates were near the highest levels in more than 3 months.  A week later, and the average lender is right in line with the lowest levels in more than a month.  There are two reasons for this, or rather, one reason and one caveat.

The caveat is that the range has been fairly narrow since the end of October.  Most of the recent rate spike took place by October 24th, so we didn't have to traverse much ground to get back to those rates.  Additionally, those rates are still substantially higher than the beginning of October.