When the coronavirus pandemic began battering the global economy in March, Brittney Stroh, 32, began shopping around to refinance her mortgage for a second time in Colorado Springs.  

Stroh, a school administrator at Atlas Preparatory School, reached out to Security Service Federal Credit Union, her lender at the time, which offered her a 2.5% rate, down from 3.85%. But they wanted $4,000 in closing costs. Then she sought options with Wells Fargo to see whether she could save more money by refinancing with them, but rates hovered just above 3%. 

She eventually settled on a 2.63% rate with Ent Credit Union on a 15-year mortgage, which knocked $95 off her monthly payment. 

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“We were really excited to snag a lower rate,” Stroh says, adding that her husband is an athletic director. “We’re really fortunate because we work in education, so our jobs are fairly secure. But budget cuts are coming from the state, so no job is absolutely safe. For us, it’s always been about keeping our expenses as low as possible.” 

Stroh isn’t alone. When it comes to scoring the best mortgage rate, geography matters.

Metropolitan areas with a higher concentration of banks tend to have lower mortgage rates for borrowers than those metros with fewer banks, according to a new report from Haus, a home-financing startup that provides homeowners with additional liquidity. 

There is a more than 0.75% spread across lenders and a 0.35% spread across metropolitan areas for identical borrowers, the study showed. Haus analyzed more than 8.5 million mortgage originations from Freddie Mac between 2012 and 2018. 

Why the variation? It’s typically due to supply and demand, experts say. 

Markets with higher rates tend to have fewer banks, while markets with lower rates tend to be in markets with more banks. And the level of bank concentration in a market could prove to be vital for savings if borrowers choose to use locally based institutions. 

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For Americans looking for a lower mortgage rate, borrowers have better success shopping around than trying to improve their credit profile, according to Ralph McLaughlin, chief economist at Haus.

That’s because the variation in mortgage rates is driven much more immediately by lender and property location than by reasonable borrower improvements in credit score, debt-to-income and down payment amounts, McLaughlin says.

“For those looking to take…