I have a 15-year loan. It will be paid off in about 10 years.
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I definitely saw 15-yr at or below the 30-yr, but I think closing costs depend on the loan amount (smaller loans are relatively more expensive than bigger loans), so itās always YMMV.
I have two 30-year and at these rates I hope I never pay them off 
.
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That is a good point to make.
An alternate way to look at it is that they arenāt really more expensive to originate. But much of the fixed costs (pay for the loan officer, inspection, etc) are the same or not linearly increasing. So even though the costs are smaller, theyāre a larger percentage of the loan amount. That means it takes a larger negative points credit (from taking a higher rate) to offset those costs.
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You may want consider a cash out refi if the rates get low enough.
The rates are coming back down. My crystal ball says they may soon set new records, maybe even as low as 2%.
Thereās some uncertainty for people already under quarantine restrictions and for those who might be under restrictions before their loans close (thatās probably everyone), as mortgages usually require an appraiser (can be waived / electronic if LTV is low enough) and a face-to-face with a notary. I canāt guess how that might play out in areas like SF thatās now under the āshelter in placeā order, but a longer lock (45-60d) might be a good idea (and should be free as itās also in the brokerās / lenderās best interest).
Explanation of why rates are going back down
F*cking CNN with their misleading headlines and misinformed statements.
The 0% interest rate means absolutely nothing for mortgages, because mortgages are not affected by the overnight lending rate set by the FED. Mortgages follow the 10-year Treasury Note, which is traded on the open market.
The cash infusion ā buying of treasuries and MBS ā thatās whatās driving down the mortgage rates. Not the 0% overnight rate.
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Well, yeah you have to read past the headline.
Itās not just the headline though. They wrote (emphasis mine):
This is the second emergency rate cut in two weeks, and brings the federal funds rate to between 0% and 0.25%. Itās designed to stimulate the economy by making it cheaper for people to borrow money for a mortgage, among other things.
Thatās wrong. In the next paragraph they mention āFedās move to buy at least $500 billion in US Treasuries and at least $200 billion in mortgage-backed securitiesā. That is the action designed to make it cheaper for people to borrow money for a mortgage, not the federal funds rate cut.
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If I knew you were going to get so worked up about it, I would have highlighted that part only. 
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Ironically this garbage article also made no mention of the 10-yr Treasury bill yields being well below their historic lowest. Now 10-yr notes donāt exactly correlate with mortgage rates but itās way closer than with Fed Rate.
Also short-term lending rate drops like this are designed to boost economy/spending and thus benefit stocks more than bonds. In fact, often decrease in Fed rates lead to bond sell-offs as investor move capital from bonds and MBS to stocks, which in turns leads to temporary increase in mortgage rates. Bottom line, usually Fed rate doesnāt have much immediate effect on mortgage rates making the value of this article even lower than the Fed rate IMO.
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I didnāt know anyone still watched/read/listened to CNN.
Hereās something interesting, Chase lowered their 30-yr fixed mortgage rate just for asking (and to a very good rate to boot):
Iāve asked my lenders in the past to reduce my rate (nope) or provide a competitive refi quote (not even close). I think the only reason it may work now is because weāre living in interesting times.
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Bring it down to 2.5% on a conventional loan and we got a deal.
Thatās my topside number. Iāve been trying for a week to get at, or below it. Not even close. It seems like if you own your house, no one wants to re-mortgate it ā¦ at least not at a decent rate.
A free rate reduction with a phone call and a few signatures is a pretty good deal. And thereās probably no seasoning requirement since itās not a new loan, so you could try it again if the rates dropped.
It could be weeks before we see rates below 3%. Or they could go up. Or stay flat.
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Itās a Jumbo, so I bet Chase owns the note rather than Fannie or Freddie. Without a middle man, it just takes mortgagor and mortgagee to agree.
Contractually, if you have a Fannie/Freddie loan, short of some government bailout program, your interest rate cannot be reduced. So if youāre in that boat, youāll either need to refinance or hope for the feds to change the rules around, like they did with TARP.
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Just for reference - if you want to refi right now, take a look at some of the smaller lenders.
The usual search engines that yield low rates - BankRate, Zillow, etc are offering uncompetitive pricing right now. Zillow lenders are almost all brokers/correspondents for the big guys (WF, PennyMac, Chase, Provident, etc), and the big guys right now are still slammed, so they arenāt offering their lowest rates.
However, I am seeing that many smaller lenders, like local banks and credit unions that self-fund and sell their conventional loans to Fannie and Freddie, are offering great interest rates that are a full half to three quarters of a point below what Iām seeing in the search engines for comparable closing costs. This more closely aligns to the FNMA MBS prices right now in the market.
tl/dr: the big guys are super busy, so they are overcharging for refis. Take a look at the smaller lenders right now.
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Iām seeing record lows today for a 30-yr fixed, slightly lower than the lowest I saw in late February or early March. Rates have been slowly inching down into this range.
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Same. I havenāt compared between multiple lenders, but have you found any that donāt have a large penalty for no-cost refis? Iām still seeing about a ~0.5% rate penalty to go below $0 lender fee cost (which still leaves the full third party cost) on the lender Iāve used before. By penalty, I mean you can look at the rate chart and the cost vs rate steps is ~$0 difference for a whole 0.5% change at that level before the steps up in rate reduce the fee further. This penalty seemed to first pop up earlier this year a few days after the first big drop in rates, so the no-cost rates are actually still higher now than back then.
With that 0.5% penalty, Iām stuck at a 3.625% quote for a no-cost refi (and I last refiād near end of 2016 for 3.75% no-cost) for a $155k loan in TX.