This week the trend is real and it's up: oil pushed toward $100, the 10-year cleared 4.7%, and mortgage rates printed a yearly high near 6.58% on Freddie's survey. Resist the reflex to send "rates are about to drop" hopium — Mortgage Professional America's reporting this week captured where borrowers actually are: affordability, not rate speculation, is driving purchase decisions. Buyers who are moving forward have already made peace with a 6-handle. Your marketing should meet them there, with payment-certainty framing instead of a wait-and-see pitch that the market keeps contradicting.
Given today's 30-year sits at the top of its recent range, the segment math splits cleanly in two. Your purchase pipeline doesn't need a rate story at all — it needs a "here's your real monthly payment, and here's why locking it beats guessing" story. Your database, meanwhile, holds a genuinely warm list: past clients whose note starts with a 7. Even at a yearly high, moving a $400K loan from 7.25% to today's pricing is roughly $180 a month — about $2,100 a year — and that pencils regardless of what oil does next week.
The tactical move is to build one asset that works in a rising-rate week: a 30-second "payment check" video where you say the quiet part out loud — rates went up, and here's who still benefits anyway. It's counter-programming. Every competitor is either silent this week or recycling a rate-drop prediction; a straight-talking "here's the honest math today" clip earns trust precisely because it isn't spin. Pair it with a short outreach list rather than a blast — twelve well-chosen 7%-plus past clients beat a thousand cold sends.
record one 30-second payment-check video and DM it to five past clients whose current rate starts with a 7.