Act Quickly On That Mortgage Quote — Mortgage Rates Are Changing Every 2 Hours, 58 Minutes

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A "rate sheet" is a mortgage lender's official pricing menu and for the first time since November 2008 -- a month marked by financial market hysteria -- mortgage lenders issued 100 separate rate sheets over the last 2-month period.

Accounting for weekends and holidays, that's 2.38 rate sheets per day on average, or roughly 0.38 more than the number of meatball sandwiches Johnny Utah is asked to buy for Angelo. Mortgage rate volatility is back in a big way, folks.

To put the pace of change in perspective, consider this:

• In the last 60 days, lenders issued 4 or more rates sheets in a day once per week
• In the last 1 year, lenders issued 4 or more rates sheets in a day once per month

The last 2 months have been a mortgage rate whirlwind.  For homeowners and home buyers in places like Cincinnati and Chicago, it's been difficult to zero in on mortgage rates and lock them in.  With rates are "expiring" every 2 hours 57 minutes, it's enough to make a person want to go back in time to, say, February and March.

The good news here, though, is that the recent volatility may be a signal that mortgage rate collusion among Big Bank Lenders is ending.

There's no evidence to support a claim like this, but for a very long while, rates trended tightly among the biggest players with very little difference in rates or points. Then, starting about 10 days ago, pricing started to open up a bit; to separate from bank to bank.

The volatility we've seen lately may really just be the return of competitive pricing to the mortgage space.  This idea is backed by the VIX -- otherwise known the "Fear Index".  The VIX is currently at its lowest levels since the September 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Or, deferring to Occam's Razor, mortgage rates may be jumpy because there's still a lot of uncertainty about the U.S. economy.

Either way, life is tough for home buyers and people wanting to refinance.

As a guy who sees rates change all the time and without much notice, I'll say this: unless you're prepared to accept a higher rate that what you've just been quoted, you may not want to gamble on getting a lower one.  An eighth-of-a-percent can add up over time but for some reason, it seems to add up a lot faster when you're wasting money instead of saving it.

If you don't have the means to watch mortgage rate changes in real-time, consider following me on Twitter.

Now, if you've never been on Twitter, it's seriously simple.  When you go to follow me, Twitter will ask you to register for a free account.  Do it.  Then, whenever you log back into Twitter, you'll see my last series of updates.  It will give you a feel for whether rates are improving or worsening.