The most useful thing published this morning was not about rates. National Mortgage Professional's read on the last four weeks is that more homes are reaching the market while fewer buyers are signing contracts, and that the gap between those two lines is where seller-paid financing help lives. That is a product conversation, and it is one you can have today without waiting on anything. It is also the right week for it, because the only scheduled event left is Fed Chair Kevin Warsh's Jackson Hole keynote at 10:00 a.m. Eastern and the calendar is then empty through the holiday weekend until the September 4 employment report. If you drafted both versions of a reaction post yesterday, publish the one that fits and then get back to the concession conversation, because that is the one that closes a file this month.
Be plain about the rate backdrop, because your borrowers will check it. Bankrate's 30-year conventional is 6.73% this morning, unchanged from yesterday, one basis point above last week and exactly where it sat a month ago, inside a 30-day band of 6.67% to 6.80%. Rates have not come down, and no campaign built on the premise that they have will survive first contact with a borrower who opens a search tab. What has changed is who is willing to pay for a lower one. On a $400,000 loan at 6.73% the payment runs about $2,589 a month. A 2-1 buydown drops that to roughly $2,082 in year one and about $2,329 in year two, and it costs approximately $9,200, or a shade over 2.3% of the loan amount. That is a $507 monthly difference in the first year, funded by a seller who six weeks ago would not have returned the call. On a $300,000 loan the same structure costs about $6,900 and takes the first-year payment from roughly $1,942 to $1,561.
Two supporting numbers make the pitch credible rather than promotional. The Mortgage Bankers Association put July's median mortgage payment down $16 from June, and ICE reported delinquencies dipping again with serious delinquencies falling for a fifth consecutive month. Affordability is improving at the margin and borrowers already in loans are performing. That is the honest backdrop for telling a buyer this is a reasonable moment to transact, and it is far more persuasive than urgency language. The tactical move is to build the concession sheet for agents rather than for borrowers. One page, one property price, three columns: no concession, 2% toward closing costs, 2.3% toward a 2-1 buydown, with the actual monthly payment under each. Agents cannot sell a concept to a seller, but they can hand a seller a page showing that $9,200 off the buyer's first-year payment moves a listing faster than a $10,000 price cut does, because it changes the payment far more than the price cut changes the loan amount. Co-brand it, date it, and reissue it whenever the sheet moves more than an eighth.
build one concession sheet at the median price point of the ZIP code where you close the most business, and send it to the three listing agents who have had a property sitting longer than thirty days.