Skip the lead-generation sites and go to sources that reflect true lender pricing. - Optimal Blue Mortgage Market Index. Optimal Blue runs pricing and rate locks inside a large majority of lenders, so its index reflects what lenders are really locking, close to real time. - Mortgage News Daily. MND aggregates actual quotes from around the industry rather than selling placement. We carry the Mortgage News Daily rate table, right here on our site. - Freddie Mac's weekly survey. A fine historical reference, but the survey is collected over several days before publishing, so treat it as a lagging number rather than a live one. Be skeptical of sites like Bankrate and NerdWallet. They are advertiser-driven. If every honest lender is at the same rate, no one pays to advertise being average, so the rates, APRs, and fees shown get arranged for ranking rather than to show you the true market, and the people answering the resulting calls are often inexperienced. The most reliable rate is a real quote on your file. Once you are genuinely ready, get pre-approved, then gather quotes from one to three lenders in the same short window, the same morning or afternoon. Those quotes should land in a fairly narrow range, because more than 40 factors go into an accurate quote. Choose the lender who best understands your situation over the single lowest headline number. That comparison is a core part of what we walk through in the free Roadmap conversation, about 20 minutes where we run your real numbers.