BANKING & FINANCE - Sept. 3, 1993

Mortgage Rates Fall for Fifth Straight Week: The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. said this week’s average was 6.93%. Last week, rates averaged 6.97%, dipping below 7% for the first time since 1968. The rate started 1993 at 8.07% and has been falling for most of the year, except briefly during the spring when investors became temporarily nervous about inflation. Fifteen-year mortgages, an increasingly popular option for those refinancing mortgages, averaged 6.45% this week, down from 6.49%. On one-year adjustable-rate mortgages, lenders were asking an average initial rate of 4.40%, the lowest since the corporation began tracking ARMs in 1984 and down from 4.41% last week. The rates do not include add-on fees known as points.