By Andrea Coombes, MarketWatch

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Mortgage rates on fixed-rate loans inched higher this week, following Treasury bond yields as they rose in the wake of some glimmers of hope for the economy, according to a weekly survey of conforming-loan rates released by Freddie Mac on Thursday.

The average rate on a 30-year-fixed mortgage ticked higher to 4.22% for the week ending Aug. 25, after hitting a record-low 4.15% a week ago. A year ago, the rate was 4.36%, Freddie Mac said.
Read about record-low rates a week ago.

“A few good days for the stock market, and better than expected durable-goods orders helped push Treasury yields up from last week’s levels,” said Greg McBride, senior financial analyst with Bankrate.com, which is not involved in the Freddie Mac survey.

But upcoming economic news could push mortgage rates down again, McBride said.

“There’s a ton of economic uncertainty and until that is resolved, we’re looking at a lot of potential volatility both in perceptions about the economy and movements in financial markets,” he said.

That means ongoing uncertainty about where mortgage rates will head next. “Until we have some certainty in the economy, there’s not likely to be a clear direction in mortgage rates,” McBride said.

Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, is slated to speak Friday — the degree to which he calms or roils the financial markets could help to push mortgage rates higher or lower in coming weeks. The same holds true for the jobs report due on Sept. 2.

“We’ve got a big speech from Bernanke tomorrow, a lot of economic data over the next week,” McBride said, “What happens in the next seven days could be a lot different from what happened in the last seven days.”

In its release Thursday, Freddie Mac pointed to two pieces of housing-market news as helping to drive the uptick in mortgage rates: Home prices tracked by the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s national house-price index rose for the third straight month in June.

And the Mortgage Bankers Association said this week that the portion of mortgage loans that are seriously delinquent — with payments 90 days or more late, or already in foreclosure — dropped to 7.85% in the second quarter, the sixth consecutive quarter of declines.

For his part, McBride said each of those housing-market reports had as much good news as bad. The home-price index was up month-over-month but down for the year, he said, and new mortgage-loan delinquencies are on the rise. That’s a troubling sign for future foreclosure rates.
Read more about delinquency and foreclosure rates.

Mortgage rates by loan type

Rates on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 3.44%, up from 3.36% a week ago and 3.86% a year ago, according to Freddie Mac.

But rates on the 5-year Treasury indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage took a different direction this week, slipping slightly to a new low of 3.07% from 3.08% a week ago, and versus 3.56% a year ago, Freddie Mac said.

The 1-year ARM rose to 2.93% versus 2.86% a week ago. A year ago, the 1-year ARM stood at 3.52%.

To get the average rate on the 30-year fixed loan, borrowers had to pay 0.7 point on average. The 15-year fixed required 0.6 point paid, while the 5-year and 1-year ARM each required 0.5 point, on average. A point is 1% of the mortgage amount, charged as prepaid interest.

Andrea Coombes is MarketWatch’s personal finance editor, based in San Francisco.