Home Equity Rates Converge;
HELOCs Firm to 6.564%

Home equity rates converged over the two weeks since our July 6 report, with the two segments trading places in mirror-image moves. Variable-rate HELOCs firmed 0.015 points to 6.564% APR while fixed-rate home equity loans eased the same 0.015 points to 6.687%, ending their two-report climb. The fixed loan stays above the line of credit, the usual order, but the gap between them narrowed to 0.123 points, the tightest of the summer. The combined average slipped to 6.684%, still parked just under the 6.70% mark, where home equity borrowing has sat for weeks.

📊 Full home equity data: 1,374 institutions tracked across all 50 states.

NATIONAL: Home equity rates pulled toward each other over the two weeks ending July 20, 2026, with the two segments swapping the directions they took in early July. Variable-rate HELOCs firmed 0.015 points to 6.564% APR, while fixed-rate home equity loans eased 0.015 points to 6.687%, their first decline after two straight rises. The fixed loan stays just above the line of credit, the usual order, and the combined home equity average slipped to 6.684%.

The HELOC’s firming is best read as the swing of a pendulum, not a climb. At 6.564%, the variable line of credit has now printed 6.554, 6.549, and 6.564 across our last three reports, a total range of fifteen thousandths of a point. HELOCs are priced off the prime rate, which moves in lockstep with the Fed’s benchmark, and with the Fed on hold since June 17, prime has not budged; the segment average is simply oscillating around the level prime implies as lenders shuffle margins and the reporting pool grows. Until the Fed moves, this is what the HELOC average does.

The fixed loan gave back its early-July gains. At 6.687%, fixed-rate home equity loans undid their two-report climb almost exactly, returning to within a few thousandths of where they sat in late June. A home equity loan is a fixed-rate, lump-sum second mortgage priced off longer-term lending costs and each lender’s appetite, and its own three-report history, 6.691, 6.702, 6.687, tells the same range-bound story as the HELOC’s. Because the two segments moved toward each other, the gap between them narrowed to 0.123 points from 0.153, its tightest of the summer, with the fixed loan still on top, the ordering that has held for nearly this entire run.

For a homeowner, the compressed gap is the practical headline. Locking a fixed rate now costs just 0.123 points over floating on prime, the cheapest that certainty has been all season, which strengthens the case for the fixed loan for anyone with a defined, one-time expense. The HELOC keeps its own argument: draw-as-needed flexibility, interest only on what is used, and, if the Fed stays parked, a rate that goes nowhere. The structural choice has not changed, only its price. Anyone weighing the line of credit should start with exactly what a HELOC is and how it works before tapping the equity in a home.

Zoom out and the home equity market has spent a month describing a very small circle. The combined average has printed 6.705, 6.696, and 6.684 across our last three reports, drifting by hundredths around the 6.70% mark, while the two segments beneath it trade small moves back and forth. What has actually varied is the spread between them, out to 0.153 and now back in to 0.123, and that spread is the number a borrower should watch, because it prices the choice between certainty and flexibility. At its current summer-tight reading, the market is charging less than an eighth of a point for a fixed rate over a floating one, which is about as cheap as that insurance gets in a parked-rate environment.

The two segments answer to different parts of the rate picture, which is why they are worth separating. The HELOC is variable and tied to the prime rate, and prime moves directly with the Federal Reserve, which held its benchmark at 3.50% to 3.75% on June 17 for a fourth straight meeting, the first under new Chair Kevin Warsh, with projections leaning toward a possible hike rather than a cut. The Fed’s next meeting comes at the end of this month, and it is the live variable here: a hike would flow straight through prime into every open HELOC within a billing cycle or two, while the fixed home equity loan would shrug it off entirely. That asymmetry, paired with the narrowest fixed-over-variable premium of the summer, tilts the risk math toward locking for borrowers who were on the fence. With the Fed signaling no relief in either direction, waiting for a materially lower rate still looks like a weak bet.