Market Analysis
Your Buyer Just Switched Loans.
Switch the Conversation.
Rates jumped 28 basis points in a month. Buyers answered by switching loan products, not by leaving. If your team can’t hold the financing conversation, a loan officer who’s never seen your product will. Here’s the data, and here’s what to do about it.
Financing & Sales
● Active Tracking
If a deal died at the money conversation last month, read the September loan data before you blame the house. The average 30-year contract rate jumped 28 basis points to 7.1% (MBA, September data). That’s 64 basis points higher than a year ago. Buyers felt it mid-shop. The reaction was specific. ARM applications rose 7.6% in a falling market. Your buyer is re-engineering the payment and keeping the purchase. The winners this winter meet them in that math.
Refis Died. Purchases Didn’t.
Start with the volume. Total application activity fell 7.7% from August (MBA, September, seasonally adjusted). Refinances drove it, down 16.5% for the month and 54.7% from a year ago. Purchase applications slipped 1.3%. One side shut off. The other barely flinched.
Now the loan mix. Fixed-rate applications fell 9.1% in September. ARM applications rose 7.6% the same month. That pushed the ARM share up 1.4 percentage points, to 9.3% of all applications. Points, not percent. And the direction is the story. When fixed rates spike, determined buyers shop the payment.
Here’s the catch. That buyer will learn loan products from somebody. If that somebody never walked your product, the conversation happens without you in the room. Don’t sell the loan. Make sure your team can explain the options that sell the house.
Action: Build a three-way payment comparison (fixed, ARM, temporary buydown) for your two most-sold price points within two weeks. The buyer doing that math alone does it with whoever answers first.
SBGP analyzes your financials, pricing, and profit process and builds a step-by-step 12-month plan across Finance and Sales, so you can price the incentives that close deals without quietly eating the margin.
The Cash-Out Kitchen Is Gone
If you remodel, that 54.7% refi collapse is your stat. It lands on revenue. For years, the big kitchen got funded by cash-out refinancing against a cheap first mortgage. At 7.1%, nobody touches a pandemic-era note to pull cash. The project desire is intact. The funding under it collapsed.
That changes what a lead is. The homeowner who toured your showroom in April still wants the work. Whether they can fund it this year is a different question. Ask it first.
Funded leads close. Unfunded leads nurture.
Action: Add “how is this project funded” to the first-visit script this week. Route unfunded leads to a nurture track. An unfunded $80K kitchen is a nine-month lead. Counting it like a 30-day close makes your close rate lie.
Hold the Money Conversation in Your Lane
Price every incentive against margin before you offer it. Run it on every deal above your median price.
What the buydown costs versus the price cut it replaces. Incentives are a finance decision. The cheaper form of certainty usually wins the deal and protects the comps.
Scope a phased version of every project over $50K. The kitchen this year, the addition when funding improves.
A funded half-project beats an unfunded whole one. Phase two is a pre-sold job in the pipeline.
Quote big-ticket replacements three ways starting this month: cash, financed monthly payment, and repair-only.
The household re-engineering its house payment is re-engineering the furnace payment too. The monthly number is the one they compare.
The Payment Is the Product Now
At 7.1%, the house and the loan sell together or they don’t. The September data shows buyers already treating it that way. They’re trading loan products to hold a livable monthly number. Meet them there. Operators who can talk payments beat the ones stuck on square footage.
Your buyer didn’t walk away from the house. They walked away from the payment.
A BPA from SBGP is a 30+ page, step-by-step 12-month plan built specifically around your operation. SBGP analyzes your financials, your marketing and sales process, your hiring and team communication structure, and your strategic positioning, and delivers a personalized, time-based roadmap. If deals keep dying at the money conversation, the Finance and Sales sections of the BPA show you how to structure terms and incentives that close at today’s rates. DISC Profile and Motivational Assessments for you and up to five members of your management team are included.
✓ Operations
✓ Finance & Tracking
✓ People & Role Clarity
Sources: MBA Weekly Applications Survey, September 2026 · Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, September 2026
Market Analysis
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