The August producer price report landed at 8:30 this morning and it ran hot. Final demand rose 0.4% on the month, seasonally adjusted, and 5.4% over the twelve months ended in August. The core measure — final demand less foods, energy and trade services — was up 0.3% on the month and 4.7% on the year. Weekly jobless claims printed the same morning at 206,000 for the week ending September 5, down 1,000, with the four-week average also at 206,000 and continuing claims at 1,774,000. Read them together and you get the combination that is hardest for the bond market: producer inflation accelerating while the labor market shows no crack at all. Bankrate's 30-year average is 6.85% this morning, up two basis points on the day, five above where it sat a week ago and seven above a month ago. The 90-day band runs 6.47% to 6.91%; today's quote is six basis points off the top of it.
Yesterday's edition led on the retracement to 6.83% and made the point that nothing had repriced yet because the data that would do it had not printed. Half of it has printed now, and it printed above trend. The other half — CPI for August — comes Friday, September 11 at 8:30 a.m. Eastern.
The rate backdrop was already carrying a supply story before this morning. The 10-year Treasury closed at 4.80% on September 8, and Mortgage Professional America read the move as the market rebuking Treasury's announced $6 billion buyback round, pushing the yield to its highest since 2023. Mortgage News Daily framed the same session as bonds answering Bessent directly — a buyback program that this Treasury has openly tied to the shape of the curve rather than to plain cash management, and a market that declined to take the hint. A hot PPI print stacks on top of that in the same direction. The demand side has already been paying for it: the MBA's weekly survey put mortgage rates at their highest level in fifteen months, with the refinance index down 6.2% to its lowest reading since May 2025.
For pipeline purposes this week is a lock-or-float conversation with two hard dates in it. CPI is Friday at 8:30 Eastern. The FOMC then meets September 15 and 16, and that meeting carries a Summary of Economic Projections — a dot plot — with the statement at 2:00 p.m. Eastern on the 16th and the press conference at 2:30. Two inflation prints and a projection round inside six days, with the first one already on the hot side, is not a week to float a borrower who cannot absorb a move back to 6.91%. Keep the surveys straight when you quote: Freddie Mac's PMMS reads 6.71% as of September 3, up five basis points on the week and two on the month, and it is a weekly survey that lags the daily quote by design — do not put it in front of a borrower who just checked Bankrate and saw 6.85%. Bankrate's other lines this morning: FHA 30-year 6.57%, VA 30-year 6.55%, 15-year 6.22%, jumbo 6.91%.
On the agency side, FHFA Director Bill Pulte announced on September 9 that every mortgage-backed security, credit risk transfer and other securitized product issued by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac will carry a VantageScore alongside its FICO score, and that VantageScore 4.0 acceptance now applies to all lenders rather than the limited group from April's rollout. FHFA has not posted a formal news release on it — this is the director's announcement as reported by Scotsman Guide, sitting on top of the agency's April 22 credit-score-competition policy — so treat the mechanics as unsettled until a selling guide update lands. The near-term cost falls on origination systems that were never built to transmit two scores, and Pulte separately said the agency is studying a bi-merge framework. Nothing in your file changes today. In lender news you can act on today, UWM dropped its high-balance LLPAs and extended Bullseye 90 pricing to eligible jumbo loans — worth a side-by-side against your own sheet before you re-quote anyone. On volume, BTIG expects third-quarter origination across loanDepot, PennyMac Financial, Rithm, Rocket and UWM to come in about 5% below consensus, with home equity and non-QM taking the share; Optimal Blue put non-QM and expanded-guidelines product at 11.3% of August rate-lock volume, the highest on its three-year series. And the housing market keeps moving toward the buyer: Redfin counted sellers outnumbering buyers by 58% in August, the widest gap in its records, with just five seller's markets left in the country and 21% of listings taking a price cut, while new listings hit their highest level since 2022 and total inventory its highest since 2020. Cotality reported no monthly home-price gain at all in July.
pull every file that is approved and floating, sort by how little cushion the borrower has, and call the top of that list before Friday's 8:30 print.