Last week they averaged 6.22 percent. Rates on 15-year mortgages also dropped to 5.89 percent from 5.90 percent. And one-year adjustable rate mortgages averaged 5.45 percent compared to 5.47 percent last week.

The costs of mortgages remained well below their year-ago levels, when 30-year mortgages averaged 6.53 percent, 15-years were 6.17 percent, and the one year ARM was 5.63 percent.

Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac vice president and chief economist, said indications that the United States is experiencing little inflation helped push the rates down. On Tuesday, the Labor Department reported that consumer prices only rose 0.6 percent in March and on April 13 it reported that producer prices rose 1 percent that month.

"The low mortgage rates that have prevailed so far in 2007 may have a stabilizing effect on the housing sector," Nothaft said in a statement. "Both housing starts and new permits for March came in above expectations, but February's housing starts numbers were revised downward. Because of weather-induced fluctuations in housing statistics, we will have to see what the numbers show later in the Spring to gauge whether the March readings are indeed a signal of market turnaround."

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Also on Tuesday, the Commerce Department reported housing starts rose by 0.8 percent in March.

Freddie Mac said lenders charged an average of 0.5 percent in fees and points on 30-year and 15-year mortgages, both up from 0.4 percent last week. Fees on the one-year ARM rose to 0.7 percent up from last week's 0.5 percent.

The "5/1" ARM, set at a fixed rate for five years and adjustable each following year, was nudged lower to 5.92 percent from 5.93 percent last week. Fees and points charged on the hybrid mortgage averaged 0.6 percent, up from 0.5 percent.

Freddie Mac is a mortgage finance company chartered by Congress that buys mortgages from lenders and packages them into securities to sell to investors or to hold in its own portfolio.

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