Analysts say that the American mortgage sale is finally coming to an end.  Mortgage rates on home loans are likely to remain modest, but the ultra-low borrowing costs that helped millions of homeowners to refinance and helped revive the housing market are quickly fading away. 

Rates on 30-year fixed mortgages hit 4.25 percent on Thursday, up from 4.12 percent on Wednesday morning before the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, signaled the central bank might begin easing back on stimulus efforts later this year. As recently as May, the average interest rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage stood at 3.5 percent, close to the lowest in decades.

“Mortgage rates tend to move a lot in a short amount of time, then do nothing for a longer period,” said Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com, a personal finance Web site. 

The recent move upward in mortgage rates signals the beginning of a longer-term trend of higher borrowing costs for home buyers, which had reached lows not seen in decades.

“Clearly, mortgage rates and bond yields will be higher in the long run than they are today,” Mr. McBride said, adding that he expects borrowing costs on 30-year fixed mortgages to hover in the 4 to 4.5 percent range for the rest of the year. “I don’t think rates will go back below 4 percent,” he said.

Even if mortgage rates do move higher than that, they will still be well below the levels that prevailed as recently as 2007, before the recession and the financial crisis. Between 2000 and 2007, rates averaged 6.5 percent on 30-year mortgage notes.

“I don’t think this foreshadows a huge rise in rates but there will be more volatility in the fixed-income markets than we’ve seen recently,” said Brian Rehling, chief fixed-income strategist at Wells Fargo Advisors.