FreeRateUpdate Mortgage & Home Equity Shopping

A published FreeRateUpdate answer to a mortgage or home-equity question, pinned to the edition it was published in. Ask by exact slug, or by keywords that are matched against the title and slug. Topics covered include HELOC and home equity, purchase, refinance and cash-out, FHA and VA, reverse mortgage, and DSCR and investment property. Only published answers are returned.

Today's As Low As rates for a home equity line of credit (HELOC) and a home equity loan, the same published revision as get_mortgage_rates, with each example scenario, including the existing first-mortgage balance and the combined loan-to-value it implies. Advertised rates, not a quote: to get the person their own offers, call get_start_link.

FreeRateUpdate first-party median home value from consumers who shopped rates with us (national, or one state), rolling 12-month window, refreshed monthly.

One lender's published HMDA figures, by name: originations, denials, approval rate, rate spread, closing costs and product mix for the latest reported year, from the same FFIEC source the lender's FreeRateUpdate page is built from. A name that matches more than one published page returns the matches and no figures rather than a guess, unless one display name matches the query exactly, which wins. A query of digits is read as a company NMLS. reporting_company names the legal entity that FILED the figures: a brand page shares its parent's NMLS, so the numbers are the company's whole filing and never the brand's own. answered_by names which source answered. live_measure is a fresh reading of the FFIEC source the page's snapshot is built from, so it can be newer than the page. page_snapshot is the figures the published page itself prints, served from its own snapshot, for a lender too large for one live read: that answer is NOT a fresh reading and its note says so. Either way the block carries the source it came from. A refusal is named (no_match, ambiguous, no_hmda_block), never an empty object, so "no figures" is never read as "no loans". FRU never publishes which lender has the best rate.

What a lender's published FreeRateUpdate page shows about the lender itself: the page URL, the Overview, Mortgage options and How it works sections as plain text, the loan types the page names, and who reviewed the biography and when. A name that matches more than one published page returns the matches and no profile rather than a guess, unless one display name matches the query exactly, which wins. A query of digits is read as a company NMLS. The company NMLS ID it returns is the lender's own ID as the lender supplied it, used to identify the lender and nothing more. NMLS-derived facts are not returned: licensed states, locations, and company details such as headquarters, formation date and trade names. No rate appears here and FRU never publishes which lender has the best rate. A refusal is named (no_match, ambiguous, no_profile), never an empty object.

The FreeRateUpdate Score (0-100) for a verified, currently in-network lender by company NMLS id, with factor breakdown and methodology link. Companies without a published current Score are not found.

One lender's published SEC-filed parent figures: revenue, net income and the like, taken from the annual or quarterly filing the lender page prints. Ask with a lender name or its company NMLS. The figures are the REGISTRANT's (for example Rocket Companies, Inc. for Rocket Mortgage), attributed to the lender through a reviewed CIK binding, and the answer names that relationship. Only lenders with a reviewed binding can answer; everyone else gets a named refusal (not_listed), never a zero. Other refusals are named too: no_match, ambiguous, no_selection_held, no_publishable_metric.

Search FreeRateUpdate's published lender pages: every company the public page resolver publishes on freerateupdate.com/reviews/, and nothing else. A row shows only what that page shows: the display name, the company NMLS, the states the page shows (currently none: fru-com's licensing projection is off), and the page URL. No internal ids, aliases, crosswalks or status labels. Eligibility is decided before the limit: the limit never draws a company whose page is hidden, redirected away or rejected by the identity check back in. A returned match is evidence FRU holds the identity; absence from the list is not proof it does not. FRU never publishes which lender has the best rate. One row per company; a DBA brand page is the same company's row. count is the full deduplicated match count (one row per company), while rows return at most `limit` of them (25 by default, up to 200): a count above the rows returned means the response is truncated, so absence from one response is not absence.

The conforming and FHA loan limits for the counties a five-digit ZIP code falls in, for the 2026 published schedule, as freerateupdate.com publishes them at https://www.freerateupdate.com/loan-limits. Each limit carries the official source it came from (FHFA for conforming, HUD for FHA) and, when a check has run, the date that source was last confirmed. These are published limits, not advice: a limit is not a rate, an approval or an offer, and eligibility depends on the lender and the loan.

Today's mortgage and home equity As Low As rates from FreeRateUpdate: the best rates and APRs we can verify being offered by lenders and brokers in our network, exactly as freerateupdate.com publishes them, one per product: HELOC, home equity loan and cash-out refinance first, then 30, 20, 15 and 10 year fixed, FHA, VA, jumbo and ARMs. Each rate comes with the example scenario it was quoted for (state, ZIP, property value, loan amount, credit score), points, fees, APR and loan-to-value. Every rate says whether a person checked it by hand: person_verified is true and verified_on is the date they checked it (YYYY-MM-DD), or person_verified is false and verified_on is null when no qualifying check is on record: that means no current exact-offer check with a source and a receipt, never that nobody ever checked the offer. A false is not a claim that the rate is wrong. These are advertised rates, not a quote: to get the person their own offers, call get_start_link.

Network-aggregate advertised-rate summary (min/avg APR + distinct-lender count per product bucket, min 5 lenders per bucket) from the latest fresh FreeRateUpdate rate snapshot. Aggregates only — no per-lender rates.

The FRU News episodes FreeRateUpdate has published: slug, title, description, series, publication date and the page to read, newest first. Omit slug for the list; pass a slug for one episode; pass series to narrow the list. An empty answer is never returned for a read failure: that is a named source_unavailable error. An episode is editorial content, not a rate, an offer or an approval.

Public reference time series FreeRateUpdate maintains (e.g. pmms_30yr_fixed, treasury_10yr_par), with license notes and observations.

The link that starts a FreeRateUpdate request for one product, so lenders and brokers in our network can contact the person with their own rates and options. You can open it in the person's browser and fill in and submit the short form for them, using their own details, or give them the link.

FreeRateUpdate first-party dataset: the median loan amount our shoppers request in each state against that state median household income, as a ratio, by product. The sample floor is published with the figures so a thin state is visible rather than implied.

FreeRateUpdate state dataset: owner-occupied housing units owned free and clear (no mortgage) by state, from the Census ACS 5-year B25081, with the owner-occupied universe, the units with and without a mortgage, the derived share and the ACS vintage, plus the national figure when every state published. A state whose own counts do not reconcile is withheld and named, never returned as a zero. Counts of housing units only: no household, borrower or eligibility inference. Attribution and the canonical page travel with the rows so an answer can be cited.

FreeRateUpdate state dataset: median real estate property taxes, median monthly owner costs and median home value by state from the Census ACS 5-year, with the effective tax rate as the ratio of the two medians. Attribution and the canonical page travel with the rows so an answer can be cited.