The 10-year Treasury yield reaches 5.18% and the 30-year mortgage average tops 7%

Treasury's table shows the 10-year yield at 5.18% on Sept. 24, up from 4.94% a week earlier, and Freddie Mac's weekly 30-year mortgage average reached 7.03%; the last earlier weekly reading at or above 7% in Freddie Mac's history file was 7.04% on Jan. 16, 2025.

Key points

• Treasury's daily par yield curve table, read from its CSV export on Sept. 24, shows the 10-year at 4.94% on Sept. 17, 5.01% on Sept. 18, 4.96% on both Sept. 21 and 22, 5.11% on Sept. 23 and 5.18% on Sept. 24. The 30-year went from 5.29% on Sept. 17 to 5.40% on Sept. 23 and 5.47% on Sept. 24, and the 2-year from 4.67% to 4.85% to 4.87%. Treasury's page says these par yields are derived from indicative bid-side price quotes, not actual transactions, taken at or near 3:30 p.m. ET. Sept. 24 was the latest row in the table when it was read.
• The overnight and prime rates in the Fed's data did not move when the 10-year did. The Fed's H.15 release, dated Sept. 24, shows the 10-year constant-maturity yield at 5.11% on Sept. 23, up from 4.96% on Sept. 22, while the effective federal funds rate stayed at 3.88% and the bank prime loan rate at 7.00% on both days. H.15 defines the effective rate as a volume-weighted median of transactions that depository institutions report, and the prime rate as the rate posted by a majority of the 25 largest insured U.S.-chartered commercial banks. The rate decision itself is in our earlier story.
• Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey put the 30-year fixed-rate average at 7.03% as of Sept. 24, up from 6.95% a week earlier and 6.30% a year earlier. The 15-year average was 6.42%, up from 6.26% and 5.49%. In Freddie Mac's history file, the last earlier weekly 30-year reading at or above 7% is 7.04% on Jan. 16, 2025, and the series has risen five weeks in a row from 6.65% on Aug. 20 (6.66%, 6.71%, 6.76%, 6.95%, 7.03%). Freddie Mac's page says its survey week runs from Thursday to Wednesday, Eastern time, so the Sept. 24 figure describes applications from Sept. 17 through Sept. 23, not Sept. 24 itself.
• Governor Michael Barr, in a Sept. 23 speech at a housing affordability summit hosted by the Chicago Fed, said that in Barr's base case "further policy adjustments are likely to be needed" to bring inflation down to target. In the same speech Barr cited the Atlanta Fed's Home Ownership Affordability Monitor at 68 in July 2026, a value Barr described as the lowest in 21 years. This summary does not say what caused the yield moves above.
• For scale, we read Treasury's yearly CSV exports for 2007 through 2026. In them, the last 10-year close above 5.18% before Sept. 24 was 5.19% on July 6, 2007, and the 2007 peak was 5.26% on June 12, 2007. From 2008 through 2025 the highest 10-year close was 4.98% on Oct. 19, 2023 (see the 2023 file), and the 2026 high before Sept. 23 was 5.01% (Sept. 16 and 18). For the 30-year, the 5.47% on Sept. 24 is the highest close in those files. The previous highest was 5.40% on Sept. 23, and the highest through 2025 was 5.35% on June 12, 2007.
• The student-loan link is the May auction. The Education Department's June 4 notice says the rate is the high yield of the 10-year Treasury note auction held last before June 1, plus a statutory add-on. For 2026-27 that was the May 12, 2026 auction, at 4.468%, plus 2.05 points for undergraduate loans, 3.60 for graduate unsubsidized loans and 4.60 for PLUS loans: 6.52%, 8.07% and 9.07%. The notice says the rate on any loan is fixed for that loan's life. It covers loans first disbursed from July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027 and does not give a rate for the following year, and this story does not estimate one.

Why it matters

The overnight and prime rates in the Fed's H.15 release and the yields on long-term Treasuries are different numbers, and in the Sept. 22-23 data they went different ways: the effective federal funds rate and prime held at 3.88% and 7.00% while the 10-year moved from 4.96% to 5.11%. Freddie Mac's Sept. 24 release (7.03%) is above its Aug. 20 release (6.65%), and the 10-year in Treasury's table was 5.18% on Sept. 24 against 4.69% on Aug. 20. Freddie Mac's figure is a weekly average and Treasury's is a single-day reading; both are higher than on Aug. 20, and nothing more is claimed here about which pushes the other. For a student, the practical point is narrow: a federal Direct Loan first disbursed from July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027 is fixed at the rate in the Education Department's notice, which came from the May 12 auction. The figures here are readings as of their own dates: Freddie Mac's next weekly figure is the next one that will include Sept. 24.

This is an AI-written summary of the sources credited above and linked in the text, read and edited by Nicholas before publishing. The facts and the quote belong to those sources; the wording is ours. Read the original.