After rising last week on news of slowing job loss and Dow Jones gains, mortgage interest rates showed little movement this week. Mixed economic news kept things from changing much.

According to mortgage giant Freddie Mac today, the average rate on a 30-year Fixed Rate Mortgage inched up to 4.86 percent, from 4.84 percent the previous week. But to put things in perspective, the current rate is still way below the average 6.01 percent rate from the same time last year.

Freddie Mac’s vice president and chief economist Frank Nothaft said that rates stayed relatively unchanged on alternating rising unemployment and increased housing affordability.

“The economy lost 539,000 jobs, less than the monthly job loss of the past five months, and the unemployment rate rose to 8.9 percent…Relatively low house prices and interest rates are clearly helping first-time homebuyers. Housing affordability for the median first-time buyer reached an all-time record high in the first quarter since the NAR index began in 1981. Consequently, first-time homebuyers accounted for half of existing home sales in the first three months of this year, the NAR reported.”

Looking back over the past two months of mortgage rate averages, rates have only fluctuated within a 0.20 percentage point range, generally slipping down for a few weeks and then jumping back up for a week before sliding downward again. The fact that the range has been so limited tells me that overall not much is happening (yet, at least) in the mortgage market. And I don’t see rates moving much higher than 5 percent before some seriously positive signs come in the form of rising home sales and median price home values. It may happen gradually, it may be dramatic, but whatever it is, it hasn’t happened yet for the U.S. housing market.