Sunrise Homes & Renovations, Inc.

What’s Ahead For Mortgage Rates This Week – October 5th, 2026

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While the Core PCE Index came in at 3.0%, below the expected 3.3%, overall inflation remains well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.

With inflation still running above the Federal Reserve’s target, there remains room for rates to stay elevated or potentially increase over the next several rate decisions if the Fed remains focused on restraining inflation.

The JOLTS job openings report has also revealed a larger-than-expected gap. Job growth across the board has been slowing, with growth concentrated in only a handful of sectors.

The nonfarm payroll figures have also come in well below expectations, while the unemployment rate remains elevated on a year-over-year basis when compared with historical levels over the past decade.

PCE Index
PCE increased 3.4% from a year earlier, while core PCE—which excludes food and energy—increased 3.0%. Both were still above the Fed’s 2% target. 

JOLTs Job Openings
Job openings fell to 7.08 million in August, down from a revised 7.34 million in July and below economists’ expectations of 7.23 million. The job openings rate declined to 4.3%, signaling continued cooling in labor demand.

Non-farm Payroll
Average hourly earnings increased 0.1% in September to $37.81, bringing annual wage growth to 3.0%. Wage growth slowed from 3.1% in August, providing a more favorable signal for inflation and interest rates.

Primary Mortgage Market Survey Index

  • 15-Year FRM rates saw an increase of 0.18%, bringing the current rate to 6.60%.
  • 30-Year FRM rates saw an increase of 0.25%, bringing the current rate to 7.28%.

MND Rate Index

  • 30-Year FHA rates saw an increase of 0.05%, with current rate at 7.20%.
  • 30-Year VA rates saw an increase of 0.04%, with current rate at 7.21%.

Jobless Claims
Initial Claims were reported to be 197,000 compared to the expected claims of 200,000. The previous week landed at 202,000.

What’s Ahead
The following week will be relatively light, with the Consumer Sentiment Report being the largest release, alongside major bill and bond auctions. There are also a couple of key speeches from Federal Reserve members that could provide forward guidance on future rate decisions.

Why Buyers Should Look at Where the Thermostat Is Located

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The thermostat is one of those household features buyers can walk past several times without giving it much thought. If the temperature feels comfortable during the showing, there may seem to be little reason to investigate further. But where a thermostat is located can influence what it senses about the temperature inside the home.

Find It Before You Leave
During your tour, locate the thermostat rather than simply checking the temperature displayed on it.

Is it in a central hallway? Near the kitchen? Close to an exterior door? Is sunlight hitting the wall where it is mounted?

The thermostat responds to conditions where it is located. That location may not always feel exactly like the bedroom, upstairs office, family room, or other space where you spend significant time.

Compare Different Parts of the House
Walk through the home and pay attention to temperature differences.
Does the upstairs feel noticeably warmer than downstairs? Does one bedroom feel different from the hallway? Are rooms with large windows warmer or cooler than interior spaces?

A temperature difference does not automatically indicate a problem. Homes can have different HVAC configurations, multiple thermostats, zoning systems, or other features that affect how heating and cooling are managed.

The point is to notice what the home actually has.

Ask How the System Is Set Up
Larger or multi-story properties may have more than one thermostat or separate HVAC zones.
If you find multiple controls, ask which areas they serve. If there is only one thermostat in a large house, consider where it is positioned relative to the rooms you will use most.

You can also ask about programmable or smart thermostat features and whether any equipment or controls remain with the property.

Think About Where You Actually Live
A thermostat may report a perfectly comfortable temperature while another area of the home feels quite different.

That can become particularly relevant if you work from a home office, have bedrooms on another floor, or spend significant time in a part of the house far from the thermostat.

Buyers spend plenty of time evaluating expensive features such as the HVAC system itself, but small details about how that system is controlled can be easy to overlook.

During your next home tour, find the thermostat and then keep walking. Compare how different rooms feel. You are not trying to diagnose the heating and cooling system. You are simply learning whether the temperature shown on the wall seems to represent the places where you will actually spend your time.

Why Buyers Should Try Walking From Every Bedroom to the Bathroom at Night

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Buyers usually tour homes with the lights on, doors open, and every room ready to be seen. That makes sense for a showing, but it does not necessarily reveal how the layout will function when the house is dark and everyone is asleep. One surprisingly useful way to evaluate a floor plan is to imagine walking from each bedroom to a bathroom in the middle of the night.

Count the Turns and Obstacles
Start with the bedrooms.

Is the bathroom directly across the hall, or does reaching it require navigating stairs, corners, or several doorways? Would someone need to cross an open living area or walk through another person’s space?
This can be especially relevant for households with young children, older family members, or frequent overnight guests.

Pay Attention to Stairs
A bathroom on another level may not seem inconvenient during a daytime tour. At 2 a.m., that same trip may feel very different.

Consider whether bedrooms and bathrooms are located on the same floor and whether the route requires using stairs. Look at stair lighting, handrails, landings, and the overall path.

The issue is not whether stairs are good or bad. It is whether the arrangement works for the people who will actually live in the home.

Think About Privacy
Bathroom placement can affect privacy too.

A guest may have to walk through a highly visible part of the house to reach a bathroom. A bedroom may share a bathroom with another room in a way that requires coordinating access.

Open the bedroom and bathroom doors and look at the actual sightlines rather than relying only on the floor plan.

Imagine the House Without Showing-Day Lighting
During a showing, nearly every light may be turned on.

Notice whether hallways and stairways have conveniently located switches. Look for places where nighttime lighting could be useful without illuminating half the house.

You do not literally need to tour the property in complete darkness to perform this test. You simply need to stop evaluating the layout only under ideal showing conditions. A home is used around the clock.

Walking the route from each bedroom to a bathroom may sound like an unusually specific test, but that is exactly why it can be useful. The small routines buyers rarely consider during a showing are often the ones they repeat thousands of times after moving in.

Why You Should Check How Far the Water Heater Is From the Rooms That Use Hot Water

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When touring a home, buyers may notice the water heater long enough to check its age or condition. What they may not consider is where it is located compared with the faucets, showers, and appliances that depend on it. That distance can become surprisingly noticeable once you actually live in the home.

Follow the Hot Water
Start by locating the water heater, then think about the home’s layout.

Is it in the garage beside the kitchen? Is it tucked into a utility room at one end of a long house? Where are the primary bathroom, secondary bathrooms, laundry room, and kitchen in relation to it?

In a larger or spread-out home, some fixtures may be considerably farther from the water heater than others.

Try the Faucets
During an appropriate opportunity to evaluate the property, turn on hot water at different fixtures and notice how long it takes to become warm.

The experience may not be identical every time, and plumbing systems vary considerably, but the test can still raise useful questions.

If hot water reaches one bathroom quickly while another requires a noticeably longer wait, ask why.

Think About the Water Being Used While You Wait
Waiting for hot water can be more than an inconvenience.

Water continues flowing while you wait for the temperature to change. Multiply that routine by showers, handwashing, dishes, and other daily activities, and it can become something homeowners notice regularly.

Some properties may have plumbing designs or equipment intended to address long waits for hot water. If you see unfamiliar equipment near the water heater or plumbing, ask what it does rather than assuming.

Consider Your Daily Routine
The location may matter differently depending on how you use the home.

If everyone showers in bathrooms clustered near the water heater, distance may be less noticeable. If the primary suite sits at the opposite end of a large property, your experience could be different.

This is not a reason to reject a home simply because the water heater is far away. It is another example of looking beyond room sizes and finishes to understand how a property functions.

Buyers routinely turn on faucets during home tours to check whether they work. Take that simple test one step further. Find the water heater, look at where the home’s major plumbing fixtures are located, and pay attention to how long you may be waiting for hot water after you move in.

Why Vacant Homes Can Be Harder to Judge Than Furnished Ones

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An empty home might seem easier to evaluate because there is nothing distracting you from the property itself. Surprisingly, vacant rooms can sometimes make a home more difficult to judge. Without furniture providing scale and context, buyers may misinterpret everything from room size to how comfortably their belongings will fit.

Empty Rooms Can Play Tricks on Your Eyes
Without a bed, sofa, dining table, or other familiar object for comparison, estimating dimensions becomes harder.

A bedroom may appear surprisingly small when empty but comfortably accommodate a bed and nightstands. In another home, a large-looking vacant living room may become much tighter once a sectional, television console, and walking paths are added.

Instead of relying entirely on what the room feels like, check measurements for spaces that matter most to you.

Furniture Helps Explain a Layout
Staging does more than make a property attractive. It can demonstrate how unusual spaces might function.

An awkward corner could become a small office. A wide hallway might accommodate storage. An open area between the kitchen and living room may make more sense once a dining table defines the space.

When those visual cues disappear, buyers have to do more of that planning themselves.

Look for Outlets, Doors, and Walking Paths
Imagine where your largest pieces of furniture would actually go.

A room may have plenty of square footage but limited usable wall space because of windows, doors, closets, or openings into other rooms.

Consider where a television could be placed, whether doors would interfere with furniture, and how people would walk through the space once it is furnished.

A tape measure can be particularly helpful when evaluating a vacant property.

Do Not Confuse Empty With Bigger
Vacant homes often photograph and feel different from furnished homes, but neither presentation automatically tells you whether the layout works for your life.

Try mentally placing your own furniture in each room. Better yet, bring measurements of important pieces such as your sofa, dining table, bed, or home-office setup.

An empty room is a blank canvas, but blank canvases can be deceptive.
Before deciding that a room is too small, enormous, or perfectly sized, determine what will actually need to fit inside it. A few measurements can give you a much more accurate picture than an empty floor ever will.

What’s Ahead For Mortgage Rates This Week – September 28th, 2026

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With a light week the previous week, only a few data reports will have any far reaching impact, with the M2 money supply and the Federal Reserve Balance sheet giving the most insight.

The M2 Money supply has really only increased ever since the COVID pandemic, and has more or less kept in line with the rate inflation has been impacting the costs of many sectors.

While the Federal Reserve balance sheets show a trend of increasing lately, it has shown there is still restraint by the Federal Reserve which is evidenced by the recent increase in interest rates. They are showing strong intent that they do want to combat the rising inflation and bring it down under control.

M2 Money Supply
M2 increased to $23.343 trillion in August, up from $23.218 trillion in July, an increase of approximately $124.9 billion, or 0.54% month-over-month. On a year-over-year basis, M2 was up about 5.66%, compared with $22.093 trillion in August 2025.

Federal Reserve Balance Sheet
The Fed’s securities held outright totaled about $6.471 trillion, including $4.558 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities and $1.910 trillion in mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Compared with the previous week, Treasury holdings increased by roughly $3.9 billion, while MBS holdings declined by approximately $3.1 billion.

Primary Mortgage Market Survey Index

  • 15-Year FRM rates saw an increase of 0.16%, bringing the current rate to 6.42%.
  • 30-Year FRM rates saw an increase of 0.08%, bringing the current rate to 7.03%.

MND Rate Index

  • 30-Year FHA rates saw an increase of 0.34%, with current rate at 7.15%.
  • 30-Year VA rates saw an increase of 0.35%, with current rate at 7.17%.

Jobless Claims
Initial Claims were reported to be 220,000 compared to the expected claims of 210,000. The previous week landed at 207,000.

What’s Ahead
PCE Index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation indicator, is due next week. This will be followed up by Non-farm Payroll and Unemployment Data. Lastly, there will also be some insight on current GDP growth numbers.