NOW — the ceiling broke. Bankrate's conventional 30-year printed 7.00% today against 6.90% yesterday, 6.91% a week ago and 6.69% a month ago: 10 basis points on the day, 9 on the week, 31 on the month. The driver is the long end. The 10-year Treasury traded through 5% this morning, touching 5.01% after closing Monday at 4.97% and opening the prior week at 4.80% — 21 basis points in five sessions. The VIX is 17.6 against 17.1, so this is not a risk event; it is a repricing on inflation and supply. August CPI landed at 0.4% on the month and 3.4% year over year, and markets have moved to price a 25-basis-point increase at Wednesday's FOMC. Freddie Mac's weekly PMMS, surveyed on a different cadence and printing below the daily panels, read 6.76% on September 10 — up 5 on the week and 9 on the month, same direction. Mortgage News Daily has the same 30-year at 7.17% today.
NEXT — Wednesday is the whole week. The statement lands at 2:00 p.m. Eastern with the press conference at 2:30, and this is a projection meeting, so the Summary of Economic Projections comes with it. The decision itself is largely in the price; the dots are not. Housing starts and permits are due Wednesday through Friday, jobless claims Thursday, and the next PMMS print Thursday. Nothing else on the calendar has the weight to move the long end this week, which means the only question that matters is whether the projections show Wednesday as the start of a sequence or the end of one.
RANGE — 7.00% is the top of both windows. The 30-day range is 6.67% to 7.00% against an average of 6.78%; the 90-day range is 6.47% to 7.00% against an average of 6.70%, over 84 observations. Today is 30 basis points rich to the 90-day average and there is nothing above it. The 15-year is in the same position at 6.32%, its own 90-day high, and the 30-to-15 spread at 0.68 sits at the wide end of its 0.59 to 0.69 band. The relief is off the conventional sheet: Bankrate has FHA at 6.60% and VA at 6.64% — both at the top of their own coverage, which only runs back to August 19, so treat those as a month of history rather than a quarter — and Mortgage News Daily has the 5/1 ARM at 6.70%, a full 30 basis points under the 30-year fixed. That is the widest practical discount on the board today.
DO — two segments. The fence-sitters you quoted in the 6.60s and 6.70s over the past month are now roughly $80 a month worse off on a $400,000 loan, and they have not heard it from you; that call is the one that gets made today. The float-into-Wednesday files are the second, and the honest framing there is that the 25 basis points is not the risk — the projections are. A dot plot showing more increases ahead pushes the long end further and the rate sheet with it; one that reads as the end of a short sequence pulls it back. Neither is a coin flip you should ask a borrower to take without saying so. Do this today: pull every file floating into Wednesday, run the FHA and VA quote alongside the conventional one on anything government-eligible, and make the call before 2:00 p.m. tomorrow rather than after.