Last week the market got exactly the news a rate shopper has been praying for and the payment barely moved. That disconnect is the whole story and it changes what I would tell a buyer waiting for the economy to do the work for them. Something quietly useful also turned up at the top of the price range and it reverses advice I gave here two weeks ago.
Part One: The national week
The jobs report missed badly and rates shrugged. September payrolls came in at plus 29,000 against about 90,000 expected, unemployment held at 4.2 percent and the revisions were worse than the headline: July became an outright loss of 10,000 jobs and August was cut to 133,000. Wage growth cooled to 3.0 percent year over year.
The Fed got repriced. The mortgage did not. Odds of a hike at the October 28 meeting fell from the mid 40s to roughly one in five over the course of Friday. Yet the conforming lock index I track ran 7.31 percent Monday, 7.26 Tuesday, 7.39 Wednesday and 7.37 Thursday, with Wednesday a one year high. Even after the jobs miss the week closed 6 basis points higher than it opened, about $18 a month on a $450,000 loan. Freddie Mac's weekly survey published Thursday at 7.28 percent, up from 7.03, which is roughly $76 a month.
Applications show who is still in this market. In the Mortgage Bankers Association survey for the week ending September 25, refinance applications sat 56 percent below a year ago and purchase applications 14 percent below, while adjustable rate loans climbed to 10.3 percent of applications, the highest share since October 2025. Joel Kan, the MBA's deputy chief economist: "Mortgage rates jumped to their highest level in almost three years, pushing borrowers to the sidelines."
Read plainly: a weak jobs report used to be a rate shopper's friend and right now it is not. The short end of the Treasury curve fell last week while the long end rose and a mortgage is priced off the long end. That points at government borrowing and lingering inflation worry rather than at the Fed's policy rate, which is why a softer labor market is not reaching anybody's payment.
One caveat, because I overreached on a related point two weeks ago and said so here. I do not know that the long end stays in charge. It has been for three weeks running and three weeks is a pattern, not a forecast.
Part Two: The local picture
The closed county numbers still describe a cheaper market than the one we are standing in. Montgomery County's August reading shows a median sale price of $508,299, up 8.1 percent year over year, with 908 homes sold, down 4.8 percent, a median of 29 days on market and 47.1 percent selling above list. Those closings were contracts signed in June and early July, when the daily index sat a full percentage point lower. Quote that median as history and say so out loud. One caution: I have used a different days figure here before and the two are not comparable, because days to contract and days on market measure different things.
Here is the finding I think is worth real money this month. On two independent measures, jumbo money is now priced cheaper than conforming money. The daily lock index has the jumbo rate about 3 basis points below conforming, two sessions running. The MBA survey, built a different way by different people, shows the same: 7.30 percent on conforming with 0.75 points against 7.27 percent on jumbo with 0.50 points. Cheaper on the rate and cheaper on the fee and a quarter point of fee at the conforming ceiling is about $2,082 up front.
And the honest limit on it. Three basis points on a million dollar loan is roughly $20 a month. What matters is that it inverts advice I gave here: near the ceiling the old move was to shrink the loan to stay under it and if jumbo prices better, that flips. I would not market it without a live lender quote in hand.
Price per square foot has stopped working here as a comparison tool. New listings last week ran from $105 a foot to $458 a foot. The $105 is a flag rather than a bargain: three bedrooms, one bathroom and almost certainly a condition story behind it. The $458 end buys new mechanicals and a warranty. Cheap per foot is not the same thing as cheap.
The clearest seller story is a standoff inside one Blue Bell association. Three units, identical on bedrooms, bathrooms and square footage, are listed at $355,000, $360,000 and $409,000, which is $290, $294 and $334 a foot for the same floor plan. The newest undercut the cheaper incumbent by $5,000 and weeks later nobody has moved. A buyer who wants that floor plan is negotiating with three sellers watching each other and the top one is the outlier by $54,000.
Now I mark my own homework. Eleven open house sessions ran across eight properties this weekend, from $355,000 to $1,039,000, and afterward not one of the eight cut its price or added a session. I have been telling you sellers pull the cheap lever before the expensive one, presentation first and price second and one Blue Bell home in the mid $480,000s has now run a Saturday open house, a Friday evening one and a full weekend on top without cutting. I said price was next. It was not. That idea has one clean confirmation and one live counter example and I would rather tell you than quietly stop mentioning it.
Part Three: Guidance for October 5 through October 9
This is a genuinely quiet week and that is the point. Lender applications publish Wednesday at 7:00 a.m. Eastern and Freddie Mac's survey publishes Thursday the 8th at 10:00. After that there is no first tier release until the inflation report on Tuesday, October 14 at 8:30. The Fed meets October 28.
Realtors:
Stop pricing off the August median without a sentence attached. Those buyers borrowed a full point cheaper. The sale price held because the payment behind it was smaller and that affordability is not in the room anymore. A seller who hears this prices better the first time.
If you have anything near the conforming ceiling, call me before the offer goes out. The 2026 limit is $832,750, which at twenty percent down puts the purchase price line at $1,040,938. One Chester County listing sat under $2,000 below that line last week and at that price the down payment becomes whatever keeps the loan conforming.
Buyers:
Nothing scheduled this week is likely to move your payment, so floating through it costs little. October 14 is different. Floating through an inflation print should be a decision rather than a default. Pick the rate at which you stop floating and write it down now, while you are calm.
Ask about the adjustable before you dismiss it. One in ten applicants nationally is choosing one right now, the highest share in almost a year. Ask what happens at the adjustment and if the honest answer makes you uncomfortable, take the fixed.
How I can help
The jumbo question, properly priced. I'll put conforming and jumbo side by side on your actual scenario, rate and fees both, in writing. If shrinking the loan is still the better answer, I'll say so.
Listings priced against stale comps. I'll run the payment at this week's rate rather than the rate the comps closed at, so your seller sees the budget today's buyer actually has. That conversation goes better before the first price cut than after it.
Anything near the conforming ceiling. I'll work out the exact down payment that keeps a loan conforming and what the alternative costs, before an offer goes out.
The takeaway
The lesson from last week is an uncomfortable one. The economy delivered genuinely weak employment news, the Fed got repriced hard and the thirty year mortgage still finished the week higher than it started. If you have a buyer sitting on the sidelines waiting for bad news to shrink their payment, that strategy has now been tested and it did not work.
What did show up is smaller and more useful: jumbo money pricing better than conforming on two independent measures, a per foot spread too wide to mean anything without a condition story attached and three identical units in one Blue Bell association sitting in a standoff that favors a patient buyer.
None of that is a reason to rush anybody. It is a reason to run the real numbers this week, while the calendar is quiet. That takes me an afternoon and saves everybody a month.
Warmly,
Mackenzie
Mortgage Mom, Loansteady Mortgage