Nothing has retraced Monday's month-end selloff. Bankrate's 30-year conventional survey — the level quoted here — prints 6.76% this morning, two basis points above Monday, one basis point above a week ago, and flat against a month ago. Mortgage News Daily's index holds at 6.87% after adding six basis points Monday, and its 5/1 ARM index sits at 6.42%. Monday's session took the ten-year Treasury to a close just above 4.75%, the highest since January 2025, on positioning rather than news; today has produced no catalyst to either confirm or reverse it. Treat this morning as a holding pattern with a bias that has been upward for three sessions.
The calendar does the work from here. Jobless claims land Thursday, September 3, and Freddie Mac's weekly survey prints the same morning. The employment report — unemployment rate and nonfarm payrolls — follows Friday, September 4. CPI is scheduled for the week of September 10, and the FOMC meets September 15 and 16 with a Summary of Economic Projections, so the dot plot arrives with the 2:00 pm Eastern statement on the 16th. The technical question into Friday is whether the ten-year holds above 4.75%; several recent sessions closed within a basis point or two of that mark, so it needs a follow-through close, not a single month-end print, to count as a break.
At 6.76%, conventional sits in the upper half of a 30-day band that runs 6.67% to 6.80% and toward the top of a 90-day range of 6.47% to 6.82% against a 90-day average of 6.65%. Rates are modestly higher than a quarter ago and going nowhere over the last month. The number worth pricing today is not conventional at all — it is the government spread. FHA and VA thirty-year quotes are both running 6.39%, thirty-seven basis points inside conventional, and jumbo sits at 6.84%. On a $400,000 loan the note-rate payment at 6.76% runs about $2,597 a month against roughly $2,499 at 6.39% — near $98 a month before you account for FHA's mortgage insurance premium or VA's funding fee. For a VA-eligible borrower, where there is no monthly mortgage insurance to net back out, the whole spread is real money.
Today's focus is VA-eligible borrowers sitting in conventional pre-approvals — the ones who never mentioned service because nobody asked, or who were steered conventional on a seller-preference assumption that has not been tested. That population is larger than most pipelines think, and the pricing gap is wide enough this week that a re-run is worth the conversation on its own merits. Do this today: run an eligibility question through every active purchase pre-approval that has not been asked one — a single line asking whether the borrower or a spouse has served — and re-price the ones that come back yes before Friday's jobs report moves the board.