Bonds rallied hard on Thursday and mortgage rates noticed only a little of it. Treasury's 10-year closed Thursday at 4.96%, down 17 bps from Wednesday's 5.13%, and is trading near 4.97% this morning; Mortgage News Daily tied the rally to a tech-stock selloff that spread from CoreWeave's funding worries to bigger names. Bankrate's 30-year fixed reads 7.34%, unchanged from Thursday and down from 7.37% on Tuesday and Wednesday and 7.47% on Monday. The siblings agree on the direction: FHA is 7.17% from 7.22% on Wednesday, VA 7.14% from 7.15%, and the 15-year holds 6.76%, while jumbo ticked up to 7.48% from 7.45%. Freddie Mac's PMMS printed 7.32% for the week, down from 7.40%, but PMMS is still 0.29 points above where it stood a month ago, so this is a pullback inside a higher monthly trend.
Next week carries the catalysts. Core PCE falls in the October 23–30 window and new home sales in the October 23–26 window, Case-Shiller lands October 27, and the Fed meets October 27–28 with the statement at 2:00pm ET on the 28th, a 2:30pm press conference, and no dot plot. Fed funds sits at 3.88%. The next PMMS and jobless claims both land October 29. National Mortgage News reports KBW telling investors not to bank on the dip, pointing to inflation and the Iran conflict as forces that can push long rates back up, so a hot core PCE ahead of the meeting is the scenario that would erase this week's gain.
On range, 7.34% sits below Bankrate's 30-day average of 7.41%, inside a 30-day band of 7.11% to 7.57%, and 67 bps above the 90-day low of 6.67%, with a 90-day average of 7.02%. It is the cheap side of the past month and still the rich side of the past quarter. Government pricing tells a similar story over the coverage we have since those series resumed in mid-August: FHA's 7.17% is 7 bps under its high since then of 7.24%, and VA's 7.14% is 14 bps under its 7.28% high.
The focus today is buyers who shopped last week and have not locked. On a $400K loan, principal and interest at 7.34% is about $2,753 a month against $2,789 at Monday's 7.47%, a $36 difference that the Fed meeting and core PCE can give back or extend. Lock-or-float is a real choice here, not a formality, and the borrower should make it with this morning's number in front of them rather than after the October 28 statement. Do this today: re-quote every unlocked buyer you priced last week at today's rate and send each the monthly payment side by side with last week's.