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The Fed Raised Rates on Wednesday. By Friday Your Buyer Reached $6,300 Less House.

By Steve Waller · September 20, 2026

The Fed Raised Rates on Wednesday. By Friday Your Buyer Reached $6,300 Less House.

The FOMC raised the target range a quarter point to 3.75-4.00% on Wednesday on a unanimous vote, and the ten-year Treasury finished Friday at 5.01% - five basis points above the previous Friday and twenty-two above where it started the month. Freddie Mac's survey caught up on Thursday with a nineteen-basis-point jump to 6.95%. On the Houston median at twenty percent down, the same payment that reached $330,000 a week ago now reaches about $323,700.

The week in one sentence

The Federal Reserve raised its policy rate and the rate that actually prices your exit went up too. That is not how most people expect this to work, and it is the second week running that it has happened.

Here is the ten-year Treasury, session by session, from the Treasury's own daily curve: 4.97% Monday, 5.00% Tuesday, 5.01% Wednesday, 4.94% Thursday, 5.01% Friday. It ended the previous Friday at 4.96% and it started the month at 4.79%. Thursday looked like relief and Friday took all of it back.

The decision itself came Wednesday afternoon: the FOMC moved the target range to 3.75% to 4.00%, a quarter point, unanimously, with the statement saying plainly that inflation remains elevated and that the increase supports a timelier return to the two percent goal. The projections released with it put the median federal funds rate at 4.1% at the end of 2026 and 4.1% again at the end of 2027 - one more quarter point this year, then a long flat line. Median PCE inflation for this year: 3.7%.

For anyone underwriting a resale in 2027, that flat line is the useful part. The committee's own central case is that the rate your exit buyer finances at does not improve next year.

What the survey did, and what it cost

Freddie Mac's weekly survey printed Thursday at 6.95% on the 30-year, up from 6.76%, with the 15-year at 6.26% from 6.09%. Nineteen basis points in one print. The survey averages the prior Thursday through Wednesday, so most of what it caught was last week's move, not this week's.

The arithmetic on the Houston median, which is $330,000 in HAR's August report, at twenty percent down on a thirty-year:

Thirty-three dollars a month is nothing. Six thousand three hundred dollars of price is not nothing, and it moved in a week without anything happening to the house, the neighbourhood or the finish level. That is the number that belongs in your purchase test, and it is the reason a test run in August is not conservative now - it is simply out of date.

On the rental side, the move the desk priced on Tuesday has not reversed. Between 8 September and Tuesday's close the index took roughly $4,300 off the loan a stabilized $300,000 rental at $2,600 rent supports at a 1.20 coverage ratio. Friday closed one basis point above Tuesday. None of that $4,300 came back. The full working is here.

The one construction number that clears its own error bars

Census reported August new residential construction on Thursday, and most of it is unreadable. Housing starts came in at a 1,275,000 annual rate, down 2.6% on the month - against a confidence interval of plus or minus 12.0%. Single-family starts rose 7.6%, interval 14.0%. Neither is distinguishable from no change at all, and Census says so in the release.

Completions are the exception. 1,128,000 annual rate, down 11.9% on the month against an interval of 9.7%, and down 27.1% on the year against an interval of 8.9%. Single-family completions fell 10.4% on the month. Permits held at 1,394,000, up 3.5% on the year.

A start is a hole in the ground and competes with nobody. A completion is a finished house with a builder incentive attached, standing between your renovated resale and the buyer you were counting on. A quarter fewer of those are being delivered into the months this summer's acquisitions come to market. Thursday's brief has the rest of it.

Houston did not move, which is the whole story

HAR's August report is still the current one: roughly 7,100 single-family closings, down 11.5% on the year, a median of $330,000, 38,947 active listings, 5.3 months of supply, and 54 days on market against 52 a year ago.

Nothing in that set is a supply story. Listings are up fractionally and months of supply is flat; what fell is the number of buyers who got to the closing table. The same pile of houses turns more slowly because fewer people reach the payment - and this week made the payment harder to reach by another thirty-three dollars.

The seller sitting on a three percent note has no reason to solve that for you. He is not being stubborn; moving costs him money every month. Which leaves exactly one lever.

What the desk screened this week

Every active single-family listing in Bexar County between $80,000 and $300,000 - 2,121 of them - went through the same purchase test we run on every file: after-repair value times 75%, less repairs, less closing costs. No days-on-market filter, no hunting the remarks for the word "investor", no minimum spread invented after the fact.

Seven cleared at the asking price, and all seven survived the remarks pass, which almost never happens. Then the same seven were run as rentals, and nothing in the county reached 0.60 coverage. A house can clear the purchase test and still be a rental nobody can finance, and in Bexar right now that is the normal case rather than the exception. The screen is here.

Two costs that do not care what the ten-year does

Buried in the August producer price release is the line that belongs in every rehab budget written this month: processed goods for intermediate demand rose 1.8% in August and 11.5% over twelve months. That is the raw material of a renovation. A repair figure carried over from last autumn is not a conservative estimate; it is a stale one, and it is stale in the direction that costs you the deal.

The other is insurance, and the Texas Department of Insurance publishes the history itself. The average Texas homeowners premium was $1,961 in 2019 and $3,291 in 2024 - up roughly two thirds in five years. Approved rate changes ran 21.1% in 2023 and 18.7% in 2024, then 4.3% in 2025. The increases have slowed, but they slowed on top of a step change you carry for the whole hold, and on a small rental or a condo package it decides coverage more often than the rate does.

Set those against what the margin actually is. ATTOM's most recent flipping data, for the first quarter of 2026, puts the national gross return at 25.4% on a typical $66,000 gross profit over 165 days. The Texas metros on that same gross measure, before a dollar of rehab: Houston 7.2%, San Antonio 5.1%, Dallas 4.3%, Austin 2.0%.

The week ahead

What this changes about a file on the desk

Nothing this week changed which deals work. It moved where the clearing price sits, and it moved it down again - about $6,300 of exit price on a median Houston house, and none of the $4,300 the rental takeout lost the week before.

So rerun the file before the offer goes in. The deal calculator takes the exit rate as an input and the DSCR calculator does the same for the rental takeout, which makes re-pricing against Friday's close a two-minute job rather than an argument with a seller. Whatever number comes out is the number that goes on the contract.

Sources

Market data is from public sources and is provided for information only. Nothing here is an offer of credit, a rate quote, or investment advice. Financing is subject to underwriting, lender approval, appraisal or valuation, title, insurance, property eligibility and program availability.

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