Rates jumped to 6.95%. Call your buyers today.
Rates moved this week, and not the direction your buyers wanted. The 30-year fixed averaged 6.95 percent on Thursday, up from 6.76 percent the week before and 6.26 percent a year ago. That is a sharp move in seven days, and it landed right as the fall market was finding its footing.
Here is what it means on your calendar. Every buyer you have touring or under contract just got a different monthly payment. Some of them already know. The rest are going to hear it from a lender, a headline, or their brother-in-law. The agents who make that call first keep their deals together. The ones who wait get the panicked text Sunday night.
THIS WEEK'S PRO TIP:
MAKE THE RATE CALL BEFORE YOUR BUYER DOES
Run the payment math for every active buyer today and send it to them in writing. Old rate, new rate, the actual dollar difference per month. In most price ranges that number is smaller than the headline feels, and seeing it on paper is what keeps a nervous buyer moving.
For anyone under contract, confirm lock status this afternoon. A lock expiring next week is a problem you want to find today, not at the closing table.
When you're busy: Rate weeks are phone weeks. Post the showings, lockbox runs, and access visits on KeyPleaz® so an agent in your brokerage covers the field work while you spend the day on the phone holding deals together.
When you're available: When rates move, the busy agents get buried in client calls and hand off everything else. Open KeyPleaz® to claim showings and coverage this week, the steady work that shows up every time the market gets noisy.
MARKET NEWS PULSE
This week's jump did not happen in a vacuum. Inventory is up: 1.14 million active listings in August, 3.6 percent above last year. Asking prices are down 1.3 percent year over year to a $424,500 median. Homes are taking 60 days to sell, the same as last year, and 20.4 percent of active listings carried a price cut. Put together, that is a market with more supply, softer pricing, and buyers who just got more expensive money. Your seller clients do not get to price for last spring. Your buyer clients have more to choose from than they did a year ago. Both of those conversations are worth having this week rather than next.
QUICK STAT OF THE WEEK
Pending sales fell 0.2 percent year over year in August, the first decline since November and the end of an eight-month growth streak. It is a small number with a clear message: deals are no longer closing themselves. What you do in the next two weeks with the buyers already in your pipeline matters more than what you do to find new ones.
Open the app to set your coverage next week.
