70% of mortgage executives just told you the future

Every installment of this series opened with the 30-year fixed rate higher than the installment before it: 6.66% when the series began in late August, 7.03% the week before the HousingWire Mortgage Banking Summit. On the morning we took the stage in Dallas, Freddie Mac printed 7.28%, the highest weekly average in nearly three years. The rate clock that organized this series never stopped. The question that closes the series is whether your company is organized for it. On October 1, we put that question, and four others, to the executives in the room through a live survey, with results displayed as the votes came in. We expected the room to confirm some of our arguments. It did something more useful. It issued a verdict, and the verdict carries more urgency than anything we wrote in the five articles that preceded it. No one is waiting for the Fed Start with the number that should reset every 2027 budget now in draft. Asked where rates will be six months from now, 27% of the room said about where they are, around 7.5%. Another 25% said just shy of 8%. Another 18% said north of 8%. Add those together: seven in ten mortgage executives in America expect rates at 7.5% or higher well int...