Your borrower's feed is going to lead with one number today, and it is the wrong one. August CPI landed at 8:30 this morning: all items up 0.4% on the month and 3.4% over the year, with gasoline up 3.9% and BLS crediting gasoline alone with more than a third of the entire monthly increase. Core — food and energy stripped out — rose 0.3% on the month and 2.4% over the year, and shelter, the largest single weight in the index, was 0.3% for the month against 3.0% annually. The headline says one thing and the series the Fed actually steers by says something calmer, and the gap between them is a translation job nobody else in that feed is going to do. The Fed publishes its statement plus a full Summary of Economic Projections at 2:00 p.m. Eastern next Wednesday, September 16, so today's explainer doubles as the setup post for that one.
None of that makes today's rate better, and pretending otherwise is how you lose the borrower who checks. Bankrate's conventional 30-year is 6.85% — unchanged from yesterday, two basis points above last week, thirteen above a month ago, six below its 90-day high of 6.91%, against a 90-day low of 6.47%. On a $400,000 loan that is about $2,621 a month, roughly $35 more than the same loan 30 days back. There is no broad refi window at that level: the math only works from about 7.75% up, where a $400,000 balance saves around $245 a month. The segment that actually moved this week sits at the top of the conforming box. Bankrate has jumbo at 7.02% against 6.85% conventional, the MBA's credit availability index fell 1% in August on a 2.5% drop in jumbo offerings, and CrossCountry Mortgage raised its own conforming ceiling to $845,000 ahead of FHFA's November limit announcement, following Rocket's higher-limit marketing push. A file sized just over the current limit is a different loan this month than it was last.
The tactic is a text post, no graphic, two numbers. Put 3.4% and 2.4% next to each other with one plain sentence each — the first is what the headline says, the second is what the Fed watches — then one honest line saying the rate did not come down, and one offer to run their actual number before Wednesday. It works because the reader is already holding the first number when they arrive, so you are correcting a read instead of introducing a figure they have to absorb. Pair it with a call list rather than an email blast: pull every active file sized between the current conforming limit and roughly $850,000 and ask whether a conventional high-balance option now exists on it.
write the two-number post before 10 a.m. while the CPI headline is still the top item in your borrower's feed, and end it with a single question rather than a link.