IN THIS POST I AM GOING TO share a couple gifs displaying mortgage rate trends. Check my earlier posts here and here for other charts.
I don’t have time tonight to write up all the code for these, so I’m just sharing the images. Check back later (message/tweet at me) if you’d like to see the code.
Standard time series
First we have our standard time series gif, updated through December 15, 2016:
Compare weekly rates
Another way I like to visualize rates is to look at rates by week of year.
Instead of using date for the x axis, we use the week of the year and plot a separate line for recent years (2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016). By comparing the lines at any point on the x axis, we can see where rates were one or more years ago on this week.
Distribution of rates by year
Next I wanted to look at the distribution of weekly rates by year:
Falling time, falling rates
I was feeling a little more emotional about rates, so I put together this whimsical graph that puts time on the vertical axis flowing down. I also made it so that the alpha transparency fades and the line thickness diminished. I wanted to capture the feeling of ink brush painting.
Horizontal rates
This was an alternative of the above, with a more traditional left-to-right time orientation.
