Rate Sheets - Information About Interest Rates

Interest Rates

One of the truths about interest rates is that there is never just one rate. There is a choice of rates and the rates are very similar from one lender to the next but many many other factors are at work when determining interest rates.

Every morning when a loan officer gets to work they receive a rate sheet. Sometimes they get several of them. Mortgage bankers get the rate sheet from their company. Mortgage brokers get rate sheets from a number of wholesale lenders.

The rate sheets that they receive come in to their office across a fax machine, across a computer, or through various secure web sites requiring confidential user names and passwords. On volatile days, there may be revisions to the rate sheets as interest rates go either up or down. There have been times when rate sheets were revised more than five times in one day. Rate sheets are for loan officers' eyes only because they represent the "cost" of a loan to the loan officer, not the cost to the borrower.