Third straight session at 6.84%. Bankrate's 30-year survey has printed the same number Saturday, Sunday and this morning, and every other quote in the set is unchanged alongside it — 15-year 6.22%, FHA 6.48%, VA 6.53%, jumbo 6.88%. The bond market is closed for Labor Day, so there is no print, no auction and no Fed speaker sitting behind that flatness; it is a holiday, not a signal. What the last two weeks did is real enough: on Bankrate's own series the 30-year is up 10 basis points over seven days and 8 over thirty, and Freddie Mac's PMMS — a separate survey on a weekly cadence — read 6.71% on September 3, 5 basis points higher week over week. The 10-year Treasury last closed at 4.77%.
The quiet has three days to run. August PPI lands Thursday the 10th at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, August CPI Friday the 11th at 8:30, and the FOMC convenes Tuesday and Wednesday, September 15 and 16, with a Summary of Economic Projections attached — statement 2:00 p.m. Eastern on the 16th, press conference at 2:30. The compression is the part to plan around: CPI prints one business day before the committee convenes, which leaves you a single session to reprice anything the number breaks. With payrolls having come in at 162,000 on the 4th and unemployment holding at 4.1%, inflation is the last input still capable of moving the September dot.
6.84% is not near the top of the range — it is the top, on both windows. The 30-day range is 6.67% to 6.84% and the 90-day range is 6.47% to 6.84%. The 30-day average is 6.743% and the 90-day average 6.666%, so today's quote sits about 10 basis points above the last month's mean and about 17 above the quarter's. For a borrower deciding whether to wait, that is the honest frame: waiting has not been rewarded for three weeks, and there is nothing in the range that says it is about to be.
The segment worth working today is not the refi cohort — at 6.84% conventional there is barely a cohort to work — it is the borrower whose budget has room and whose term does not. Bankrate's 15-year is 6.22%, 62 basis points under the 30-year, and that gap has held through the entire two-week climb: 62 basis points on August 23, 62 today. On a $400,000 loan the 30-year prices to roughly $2,618 a month in principal and interest and the 15-year to roughly $3,423 — $805 more each month, and about $326,000 less interest over the life of the loan. That is a real trade for a move-up buyer sitting on equity or a borrower with rising income, and it is a conversation you can have on a day the rate itself gives you nothing to say. Do this today: pull the pre-approvals you priced conventional 30-year in the last 60 days where debt-to-income came in under 35%, and send that cohort a side-by-side 15-year comparison built on their actual loan amount — the monthly difference and the lifetime interest difference, not a generic example.