The check digits enable the sending bank (or its customer) to perform a sanity check of the routing destination and account number from a single string of data at the time of data entry.
Generally, interest rates on FHA-backed mortgages are competitive with conventional mortgages. A quick scan of interest rates for 2012 reveals that FHA mortgages feature rates of about 3.33 percent. The FHA states that the average interest rate for a 30-year fixed loan on a single-family home is about 4.06 percent.
1 The average interest rate on a 30-year, fixed-rate home loan was 3.67% , according to April 2015 data from Freddie Mac, the most recent available. 2  With my current score, qualifying for this rate is realistic.