Mortgage buyer
The average rate on the 15-year fixed-rate mortgage slipped to 2.35% from 2.37% from last week.
Housing demand continues as one of few bright spots in the pandemic-hobbled economy. Spurred by the low loan rates, first-time home purchases jumped 19% in August from July, to the highest monthly level ever tracked, according to
In the wider economy, the government reported Thursday that the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell last week to 860,000, a historically high number of people that points up the broad economic damage still occurring nine months after the first case of COVID-19 was detected in the US.
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