If you know golf, you know par. From the dictionary at AudioEnglish.net par is “a state of being essentially equal or equivalent; equally balanced”. In golf it’s essentially zero (no more, no less). In mortgages it is applied to mortgage brokers who have access to “wholesale rates” who pass along those wholesale rates at no yield (no profit) in order to beat the bank in interest rate.

The “par rate” is generally about .25 to .5 percent lower than the average rate you can get at your local bank or big national lender.

Lenders don’t actually have a “par rate” because they are not required to disclose their profit like brokers are. Brokers are required to disclose the amount of “Yield Spread” they earn which is the profit between the par rate and the rate they are charging the borrower. Banks and lenders receive much higher profits often called Service Release Premium but they are not required to disclose even though they are making as much as several thousand more dollars in immediate profits.