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📊 Every Friday at 6 AM
The Friday Rate Sheet
The rates + the scripts + the texts. Every Friday.
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#10 · APRIL 24, 2026
Rates just hit a three-spring low. The situation overseas flipped back mid-week. The Fed decides Wednesday. If your clients are moving, this is the week to have them ready.
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This Week's Numbers
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30-Year Mortgage Rate (Freddie Mac PMMS)
6.23% ↓ 7 bps (lowest in 3 spring seasons)
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Daily rate today (MND)
6.32% climbing back up since Tuesday
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What that means on a $400K loan (P&I)
~$2,458/mo ↓ ~$153/mo vs. a year ago ($1,832/yr)
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Bond rate that drives mortgages (10-Year Treasury · CNBC)
4.29% reversed higher on Iran escalation
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Purchase applications this week (MBA)
+10% WoW refis +52% YoY (the biggest jump since last summer)
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⚠️ Next big rate mover: FOMC Decision + Powell Press Conference — Wednesday, April 29 at 2:00 PM ET
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Source: Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®), week ending 4/23/2026. Daily rate from Mortgage News Daily. Rates shown are national averages for a conforming 30-year fixed-rate mortgage and do not represent a personal rate quote or offer to lend. Payment example assumes a $400,000 loan amount, 30-year fixed term, 20% down payment, and does not include taxes, insurance, or PMI. Your actual rate, payment, and costs may vary based on your financial profile. Rate ≠ APR. Not all applicants will qualify.
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Your Scripts & Texts for This Week
This week's theme: the Fed decides Wednesday. Anyone not ready by Tuesday can't act on what happens.
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🗣️ For Calls & Meetings
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What to Say to a Buyer (story-connect)
"[Name], I want to tell you about two buyers my mortgage guy had in the last two weeks. Both of them found the house they wanted and came in needing pre-approval fast. Both of them had stuff on their income and their jobs that took extra work to sort out. One of them, the seller wouldn't wait. They lost the house. And it was avoidable. If either one had come to him two or three weeks earlier, he would have caught that stuff up front and had it fixed before they were in a rush. Here's the part most buyers don't know. He can run a soft credit check on the front end, so there's zero hit to your score. No real downside to getting it done now. Can I introduce you two this weekend so that when you find the one, you're not the person losing it?"
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What to Say to a Seller (data-first)
"[Name], I want to walk you through three numbers that came out this week. One. Pending home sales were up for the second month in a row. That's signed contracts, which means closings in May and June. Two. Purchase applications jumped 10% in a single week, the biggest move since last summer. Three. Buyer demand is concentrated in the South right now, more than the other three regions combined. The sellers listing in the next two weeks are hitting a market with actual buyers in it. The ones who wait until June are listing against every neighbor who waited until June. Let's sit down for 15 minutes this week and look at what your specific situation looks like."
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📱 Copy-Paste Texts — Tap, Copy, Send
Buyer Nudge (active buyers) · Deal Post-Mortem
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[name], my lender just told me about a buyer who lost the house they wanted because their pre-approval hit a snag nobody caught early. Fixable issue, bad timing. He does a soft credit check up front, no hit to your score. Can I connect you two so that doesn't happen to us?
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Buyer Sphere (quiet leads) · The Concession Story
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[name], my lender just walked me through a deal where a buyer got $20K in seller concessions and used most of it to buy their rate into the 4s. That's happening right now. Want me to connect you two so you can see what it looks like in your price range?
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Seller Nudge (listing prospects) · Three-Spring Frame
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[name], been hearing sellers say they want to wait for rates to drop before listing. Rates ARE dropping. They just hit the lowest level of the last three springs. If you've been holding off for the window, this is it. Coffee this week?
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Past Client (sphere nurture) · Move-Up Math
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[name], if moving up has ever crossed your mind, the math shifted. Sellers are giving real concessions again. My lender just did a deal where the buyer used them to get a rate in the 4s. Want me to pull what your place could sell for and loop him in?
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📱 Social Media Post of the Week
Angle: Myth-buster. Pair with a simple graphic or your headshot. Add your own hashtags and emojis.
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Everyone keeps telling me they're waiting for rates to drop before they buy.
Here's what I'm seeing on deals closing right now. Sellers are giving real concessions. I heard about one recently where the buyer got $20K, used most of it to buy their rate down into the 4s, and the rest went to closing costs. Less cash out of pocket. Lower monthly payment than the market rate. Locked in for 30 years.
That's not a unicorn deal. Sellers are negotiating in a way they weren't 18 months ago.
If you're waiting for the rate on the rate sheet to drop, you might be missing the actual opportunity. The rate on the rate sheet isn't the rate you have to take.
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📧 Client Forward Block
Copy everything below and forward to a buyer or seller who needs this week's update. No jargon. No industry-speak. Just the facts they care about.
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Market Update — April 24, 2026
Mortgage rates hit the lowest level we've seen in three spring buying seasons this week. Compared to a year ago, you'd be paying about $153 less per month on a typical home. That's around $1,832 a year that doesn't leave your account.
Purchase applications jumped 10% in a single week. That's the biggest move since last summer. Homeowners looking to refinance are doing so at a pace 52% higher than a year ago. People are acting.
Here's what to watch. The Federal Reserve meets Wednesday afternoon and makes a rate decision at 2 PM. Whatever they say will move mortgage rates by Thursday. Events overseas have also been pulling rates in different directions this week. If you've been thinking about making a move, the next 10 days are going to matter more than the 10 before them.
If you have questions about what this means for your situation, hit reply and I'll connect you with my team.
This is a general market overview based on national averages from the Freddie Mac PMMS® for the week ending 4/23/2026 and is not an offer to lend. Your actual rate and payment will depend on your individual financial profile. Cole Brantley, NMLS# 1905939. Mpire Financial, NMLS# 2108504. Equal Housing Lender.
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🤖 AI Tip of the Week
Have three client responses ready before the Fed speaks Wednesday
Wednesday at 2 PM the Fed makes its rate decision. Powell's press conference follows at 2:30. Three things can happen: he sounds dovish (rates drop), he sounds hawkish (rates climb), or he sounds neutral (rates drift). Your clients will text you by 3:15. Have your answers written before they ask.
Open Claude or ChatGPT Wednesday morning and paste this:
"Today the Federal Reserve makes a rate decision at 2 PM ET followed by a Powell press conference. I'm a real estate agent in [your city]. Write me three client text messages I can send this afternoon. One if Powell sounds dovish and rates drop. One if he sounds hawkish and rates climb. One if nothing really changes. Each text should be under 3 sentences, should not quote specific rates, and should end with a clear next step to connect with my lender. Do not use em dashes. Do not use AI-sounding words like 'navigate' or 'leverage' or 'unlock.' Write it like I'm texting a friend, not drafting a press release."
At 2:30 Wednesday you send the right one. The agent who has a message ready in 5 minutes looks prepared. The one who waits until Thursday morning to write something looks like everyone else.
One more thing. If you want AI to sound like you instead of like a brochure, paste 3 to 5 of your own past texts or posts before the prompt above and add: "Study how I write. Match my sentence length and my word choices in everything you produce for me."
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📈 What Moved Rates This Week
The week was a tale of two halves.
Monday and Tuesday the rally continued. Rates fell for a sixth straight day. The 10-year Treasury dropped to 4.25%. Some lenders were within striking distance of 6%. The momentum carried through retail sales on Tuesday, which came in hot but got dismissed because the headline number was mostly gasoline.
Wednesday and Thursday the situation overseas flipped back. The conflict with Iran re-escalated. Oil climbed above $94 a barrel. The 10-year Treasury turned back up. By Thursday afternoon the daily mortgage rate was already 9 bps higher than the Freddie Mac weekly average captured. The rally hasn't been erased but the direction has changed.
And then there's the Fed backdrop. Powell's term ends May 15. His replacement is going through a contentious confirmation process that's currently stalled. Wednesday's meeting is probably his last. Whatever tone he takes in the press conference is going to get read as either independence or concession, and the bond market will react to that as much as to any policy decision.
No rate cut is expected. The decision itself isn't the catalyst. Powell's words are.
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🏠 What This Means for Buyers & Sellers
For buyers: every pre-approval needs to happen now, not when the offer is due.
My team had two buyers in the last two weeks who found the house and came in needing pre-approval fast. Both had income and job situations that took extra digging to sort out. Fixable issues, but not on a 48-hour clock. One of the two lost the house. The story everyone tells about pre-approval is "rates are moving, get ahead of it." The real story is simpler. If there's anything unusual in a buyer's file, the time to find it is three weeks before they write an offer, not the night before. I run a soft credit pull on the front end, so there's zero impact to their score to get the real picture. No downside to doing it early and a very real downside to waiting.
For sellers: the national number lies.
Pending home sales rose 1.5% nationally in March but the picture underneath it is uneven. The South was up year over year. The other three regions were down. The C21 CEO put it best this week: "The national number tells you the weather. Your local agent tells you whether to bring an umbrella." Use that with any seller who reads a scary headline and pulls back. Their neighborhood is a different market than the national one.
For past clients thinking about moving up:
Concessions are the real story right now. We closed a buyer two weeks ago with $20K in seller concessions. Most of it went to buying the rate into the 4s. The rest covered closing costs. Net result: lower monthly payment than the market rate, less cash out of pocket, locked for 30 years. That's the deal a move-up buyer can make today that they couldn't make 18 months ago. Past clients sitting in a home they've outgrown don't need a reason to move. They need to know the math has shifted in their favor. The Past Client text above delivers that in three sentences.
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🤝 How to Refer a Client to Me
Four steps. No friction. Your client gets answered same-day.
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1. Text me the intro
Three-way text works best: "Cole, this is [client]. They're looking at a [purchase/refi]. Can you take it from here?"
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2. I reach out within an hour
Same-day call or text. No phone tag. No long forms before they hear from a human.
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3. Free 15-minute consult
No commitment. They get real numbers, real options, and a clear next step. You get a buyer who's actually qualified.
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4. You stay in the loop
Updates at every milestone. Pre-approval, contract, appraisal, clear-to-close. You never have to chase the file.
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That's the Sheet
This weekend, pick three active buyers and send them the Buyer Nudge text. That story about the lost house is real, and it's the kind of thing buyers don't take seriously until it happens to them. Also hit a few past clients with the Move-Up text above. A $20K concession deal isn't a headline, it's a conversation starter. The agent who tells that story first becomes the one they call when they're finally ready to move.
If The Friday Rate Sheet helps you have better client conversations, send it to one agent who needs better Fridays.
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Compliance & Disclosures
Cole Brantley, Loan Officer, NMLS# 1905939. Mpire Financial, NMLS# 2108504. 189 S Orange Ave #2020, Orlando, FL 32801. Equal Housing Lender.
Mortgage rate data sourced from the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®) for the week ending April 23, 2026, and from Mortgage News Daily. Treasury yield data from the U.S. Department of the Treasury and CNBC. Housing data from the National Association of REALTORS® and the Mortgage Bankers Association. Rates shown are national averages and do not represent a personal rate quote, commitment to lend, or offer to extend credit.
Payment example assumes a $400,000 loan amount, 30-year fixed-rate term, 20% down payment, conforming conventional loan, borrower with excellent credit, and does not include taxes, insurance, HOA dues, or mortgage insurance. APR will differ from the note rate based on points, fees, and other loan costs. Your actual rate, APR, monthly payment, and total loan costs will depend on your specific financial profile, credit, loan amount, property type, and other factors. Not all applicants will qualify.
This newsletter is intended for real estate professionals for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial advice and is not an offer to lend. The Client Forward Block is a general market overview suitable for sharing with clients but does not constitute a personal rate quote.
Verify NMLS licensing at nmlsconsumeraccess.org.
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