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Marketing Pulse Sep 22

The loan limit your investor honors is worth $86 a month

Pennymac is at $850,000, UWM at $847,440 and at least eight lenders at $845,000 ahead of FHFA's official 2027 numbers — and the gap between conforming and jumbo pricing is this week's campaign.

Tuesday, September 22, 2026 30Y 7.11%15Y 6.51%5/1 ARM 6.72%

The marketing item this week is a number rather than a rule: the conforming loan limit your investors are using right now. Ahead of FHFA's official 2027 announcement, lenders have set their own early limits and they do not agree. Pennymac is at $850,000 for one-unit properties, UWM at $847,440, and at least eight other lenders at $845,000. For a borrower whose loan amount lands between those figures, the lender they choose decides whether the file prices as conforming or as jumbo. Bankrate has conventional at 7.15% and jumbo at 7.30% today — on an $848,000 loan that is about $86 a month, or roughly $31,000 across a 30-year term, decided entirely by which desk the file went to.

The rate side sharpens the same point. Bankrate's conventional 30-year printed 7.15% today, the top of a 90-day range running 6.47% to 7.15% and 43 basis points above where the series sat a month ago. Rates have moved up steadily since June rather than down, so the outreach that works right now is not a savings story — it is a decision story, and two decisions are live. One is which loan limit the borrower's lender honors. The other is whether a conventional-eligible borrower has actually priced the government option: FHA sits at 6.87% and VA at 6.86% against that 7.15% conventional, roughly $75 a month on a $400,000 loan, principal and interest only, before mortgage insurance enters the comparison.

Build one asset this week and send it two ways. The asset is a single page showing the same loan amount priced three ways — conforming at the limit your investor honors, jumbo, and where the borrower qualifies a government structure — with the monthly payment under each and nothing else competing for attention. Send it to borrowers as the answer to the question they are actually asking, which is which lender to use. Send the same page to listing agents carrying inventory in that price band, where it works as a reason to call you first: the agent version does not need a rate quote, it needs the sentence that buyers at this price point are being priced differently depending on who they call.

Do this today

identify the three listing agents in your market with active inventory that would produce a loan between $845,000 and $850,000, and send each one the limit your primary investor is honoring alongside the monthly-payment difference against jumbo.

Borrower segments to act on today

Active purchase files sitting on jumbo pricing

Jumbo is 15 bps above conventional today (7.30% vs 7.15%). Any file priced jumbo whose loan amount falls under an investor early limit of $845,000 to $850,000 may reprice as conforming — about $86 a month on an $848,000 loan.

active loans · purchases · jumbo
Active conventional purchases that never priced government

FHA at 6.87% and VA at 6.86% run 28 to 29 bps under the 7.15% conventional sheet — roughly $75 a month on a $400,000 loan before MI. Worth a side-by-side on every conventional-eligible file that also qualifies government.

active loans · purchases · conventional

Today’s content angles

Social post

The number that decides how your loan gets priced

Buying around $850,000? Lenders are using different loan limits right now — some at $845,000, some as high as $850,000 — and that number decides whether your loan is priced as a standard conforming loan or as a jumbo. On an $848,000 loan the difference runs about $86 a month. Before you pick a lender, ask which limit they are honoring. Message me LIMIT and I will tell you where your number lands.

Tactics worth stealing

When rates are rising, market the decision instead of the saving

A savings message needs rates to have fallen, and this quarter they have not — the 30-year is 43 bps above where it sat a month ago. A decision message does not depend on direction: it names a choice the borrower is making right now, in dollars, and positions you as the person who can price both sides of it. Loan-limit selection and conventional-versus-government are both live decisions today, and both survive a rising-rate week intact.

Conforming Loan Limit Gap Is This Week's LO Marketing Angle