The average rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was a bit lower last week than it was the week before, a pullback after more than a month of speedy increases.

Rates, which had been just below 4.2 percent in the second week of November, ratcheted up to 4.83 percent before inching back last week. (The average last Thursday was 4.81 percent, according to financier Freddie Mac's most recent survey.)

Financial publisher HSH Associates is seeing the same trend with its survey, which tracks not only the conforming market but also jumbo mortgages. (It put the average at 5.15 percent last week.)

"Warmer economic growth has been largely to blame for the increase in rates during the fall, but this increase has been exacerbated to a degree by the Federal Reserve's stimulus program, some post-election improvement in moods and a tax compromise which lends some certainty (and a little boost) to the outlook as we roll into 2011," HSH said in a market-trends analysis.

It's not expecting additional big increases: "While the economy is moving forward at a measured clip, there are few signals that it is powering ahead so forcefully that interest rates should rise much further than they already have, and they may have even overshot the mark, which is typical."

Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com, said much the same when he chatted with me earlier in the month about the then-upward trend in mortgage rates. He wasn't anticipating further large jumps or a big reversal. "The better trend of economic data is likely to keep a floor under mortgage rates," he said.

Here's a graph showing the fluctuation in rates this year: