Rates broke a holding pattern this morning and there is very little else on the wire. Bankrate's 30-year conventional average moved up seven basis points to 6.91%, after printing 6.84% three sessions running through the Labor Day weekend. That is the top of its 90-day range — the low was 6.47% in mid-June — and it sits 15 basis points above where the same survey was both a week ago and a month ago. The 30-day average is 6.75% and the 90-day average 6.67%, so today is not a blip inside a range; it is the range's ceiling. Freddie's PMMS, which reads a week behind, has the 30-year at 6.71% as of September 3, up 5 basis points on the week. Otherwise today is genuinely quiet: vendor and executive announcements, no agency bulletin, no GSE guide change.
Yesterday's brief led on Fannie's SEL-2026-08, which drops the signed-lease requirement for a departing residence and gives short-term rental income its own rules for applications dated on or after November 1. Nothing has moved on it since. The date is the thing to keep on the calendar — shops may adopt earlier at their option, so it is worth asking yours which way it is going before November arrives.
Two things connect this morning's move to the week ahead. August payrolls came in at +162,000 with unemployment unchanged at 4.1%, a print strong enough that the near-term case for a cut got harder rather than easier, and the 10-year Treasury sits at 4.77%. Then the calendar gets dense fast: August PPI lands Thursday, September 10 at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, August CPI Friday, September 11 at the same hour, and the FOMC meets Tuesday and Wednesday, September 15 and 16, with a Summary of Economic Projections — the dot plot — attached. Two inflation prints and a dot plot inside six business days is why pricing is unusually reactive right now. Public pressure on the Fed to cut has been widely covered this past week; the two BLS releases and the September dots are what will actually price the market.
For the pipeline, the dollars: on a $400,000 loan today's 30-year runs about $2,637 a month in principal and interest, $19 more than yesterday and about $117 more than the same loan at June's 6.47% low. On $300,000 it is roughly $1,978; on $500,000, about $3,296. The 15-year at 6.31% is 60 basis points under the 30-year — around $3,442 on $400,000, some $805 more each month and roughly $330,000 less interest over the life of the loan. FHA at 6.49% and VA at 6.57% sit 42 and 34 basis points below the conventional average. And the jumbo average, 6.85%, is six basis points BELOW conforming — on a file near the limit that inversion is worth pricing both ways before you assume the conforming answer is cheaper. With two inflation prints inside 48 hours and the dot plot Wednesday, a file closing in the next three weeks carries more downside than upside from floating.
On the regulatory side, FHFA's public Suspended Counterparty Program list now carries ten orders signed in August — three on the 19th, including two settlement and title entities, and seven on the 26th. Under 12 CFR 1227.3(a) a final suspension order directs Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks to cease covered transactions with the named person, and §1227.6(g) makes an order effective at least 45 days after signing, so August's batch binds in October. If you route business through outside title, settlement or appraisal vendors, that list is a five-minute check. Separately, Treasury and the IRS published final regulations on the car loan interest deduction today (TD 10054, 26 CFR parts 1 and 301), effective November 9: up to $10,000 of qualified passenger vehicle loan interest becomes deductible, with new information reporting for any trade or business that receives $600 or more of such interest from an individual in a year. It is not a mortgage rule, but it changes the after-tax cost of the car payment sitting in a borrower's debt-to-income. On the vendor side, nCino brought broker-originated loans into the same point-of-sale its retail customers use, Truss Financial added in-house underwriting and funding to its non-QM and DSCR platform, and NEXA Lending named Geri Farr chief executive with Mike Kortas moving to executive partner.
Things you may have missed this week. HousingWire tied the September 1 leg of this rate run to remarks from Kevin Warsh at Jackson Hole, with Treasury buybacks and persistently wide MBS spreads cited as reasons the move could stick — useful context for a borrower asking why rates rose while the Fed has not met. The Eighth Circuit upheld the Gibson commission settlements covering Compass, Redfin, The Real Brokerage and six other firms, which adopt the NAR practice changes, so a referral partner still asking whether those terms hold now has an answer. And Northwest MLS's First Look policy is being read as a possible template for how other MLSs write coming-soon rules, with Compass having sued NWMLS over them in April 2025. The 72-hour recap, all of it November-dated: SEL-2026-08 rental income on November 1, the UAD 3.6 and new URAR mandate on November 2 after which UCDP rejects UAD 2.6 appraisals, and last week's FHFA directive opening VantageScore to every lender.
pull every conventional purchase file scheduled to close in the next 21 days and tell each borrower — before Thursday's PPI print, not after — what their payment is at today's number and what a quarter-point move does to it in dollars. The conversation costs you nothing today and gets expensive on Friday afternoon.