Mortgages · October 2, 2026
A. Verne Ridge on the 7.28% Mortgage
The 30-year rate hit 7.28%. The Chair asked what it means. Mortgages answered, Capital Markets passed through, and the editor commented from 1875, 1895 and 1908.
EVERYWHERE (Oct. 2, 2026) — The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 7.28% on Thursday, by Freddie Mac’s weekly survey, up from 7.03% a week earlier and 6.34% a year ago. The 15-year was 6.60%.
EveryBank holds $703.1 million of home loans, 21% of its loan book. They yielded 4.8% in the second quarter. The median bank holds $66.8 million, and its book yielded 6.3%.
A. Verne Ridge, Chair and Chief Executive Officer, asked Greyhair Borington, Head of Mortgages, what the new rate means.
RidgeWhat does 7.28% mean to homebuyers, and to us?
GreyhairNobody is going to sell. A mortgage from 2021 is at about 3%, and nobody trades that for 7.28%. So everybody else has a harder time buying.
RidgeWhat is for sale?
GreyhairAbout 1.16 million listings in September, a few more than a year ago. The median asking price is $419,250, and the median listing has sat 61 days. Existing homes are selling at a pace of 3.98 million a year, with 4.9 months of them on the market.
RidgeAnd new ones?
GreyhairBuilders started 918 thousand at a yearly pace in August. They have 8.5 months of houses to sell. Six is balanced. The median new one sold for $393,700.
RidgeAnd the payment?
GreyhairOn $300,000, it’s $2,053 a month. A year ago it was $1,865. Same house, $188 more.
Cap Markington, Capital Markets (new hire), was passing and joined in.
CapThis is what I keep saying. A conforming loan doesn’t have to live here. Fannie or Freddie will take it for cash, or swap it for a UMBS we can sell or pledge. We make the loan, deliver it, keep the servicing fee, and the rate is somebody else’s problem.
GreyhairA what?
CapIf you had listened to me, Bob and Sally’s loan would be other people’s problem now. We collect payments on $1.35 billion of home loans, and only 48% of it belongs to someone else. The rest is on our books at 4.8%, and we can’t sell it now. Ask Bill what he’s paying for new deposits these days.
RidgeI know what a UMBS is, Cap. I want Bob and Sally’s loan on our books. Thanks. See me before the end of the day about the bond book. We need to talk.
CapIt’s held to maturity. Held to maturity means held to maturity. The mark only matters if the house is on fire.
Cap scurried away before anyone asked whether it was. It never is for the Mean. You can’t have a run on an average. It sometimes is for the Median.
GreyhairSo, not a lot of business to report.
RidgeBut we’re an average community. People need houses to live in. They can’t rent forever. Millennials and Gen Z want homes, not condos.
GreyhairI’m here. We’re in the community, ready to lend. People are just not calling me. I need to get a cell phone.
| June 30, 2026 | Mean | Median |
|---|---|---|
| Home loans held | $703.1M | $66.8M |
| Home loans serviced for someone else | $647.4M | none |
| Yield on the loans held, second quarter | 4.8% | 6.3% |
| Held-to-maturity bonds | $488.2M | none |
| Unrealized losses on bonds | $77.1M | $3.1M |
| Unrealized losses ÷ equity | 12.4% | 7.0% |
Of EveryBank’s $77.1 million in bond losses, $51.2 million is in the held-to-maturity bonds, which sit 10.5% below cost. Sixty-three percent of banks own no held-to-maturity bonds at all, the median bank among them. Its losses are already counted in its equity. Its mortgages are not marked at all.
Editor’s comment
Mr. Twain was not in the office. He is never in the office. Reached by phone, or something like it, he referred us to three things he had already written.
On whether to own the mortgage. In 1875 his brother Orion was raising chickens on a rented farm near Keokuk, Iowa, and asked him to buy it. He sent $100 instead, and this:
"I hardly know whether I would rather own the mortgage that is on the place or the place itself. They seem to be of about equal value—as investments."
— Mark Twain to Orion Clemens, Hartford, March 27, 1875. Mark Twain Project
Mr. Ridge would rather own the mortgage. Cap would rather own neither and keep the servicing fee.
On held to maturity. His publishing firm failed in 1894, and he was the collateral. His creditors could take the firm. They could not take what he would write and say next, which he pointed out at the time: "The law recognizes no mortgage on a man's brain." He paid anyway, every creditor in full by 1898, out of a lecture tour around the world. Cap has asked that the next line be read as the definition of held-to-maturity. It was said by a debtor, about a debt:
"...honor is a harder master than the law. It cannot compromise for less than a hundred cents on the dollar, and its debts never outlaw."
— Mark Twain, statement on his debts, Vancouver, B.C. The New York Times, Aug. 17, 1895
He ended the statement with the only earnings guidance he ever gave. His dividends, he said, "if not available for banking purposes, may be even more satisfactory than theirs."
On whether the house is on fire. He had $51,199 in the Knickerbocker Trust Company when it shut its doors on Oct. 22, 1907. The choice was a plan to reopen it or a permanent receiver. He wrote to the other depositors:
"It costs more to keep a permanent receiver than it does to keep a harem."
— Mark Twain to the other depositors of the Knickerbocker Trust Company, Jan. 17, 1908. The New York Times, Jan. 19, 1908
The depositors took the plan. The Knickerbocker reopened in March 1908 and paid them back in installments, the last in March 1910.
He also struck two lines from this post. One says a banker lends you an umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back when it rains. The other says to buy land, because they are not making any more of it. Both are credited to him everywhere. Nobody has found either one in anything he wrote. The earliest known versions are from 1905, in a London accountants’ weekly and a Kansas newspaper, and his name was not attached to them until 1944 and 1971.
Mortgage rates are from the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey of Oct. 1, 2026. Listings, asking price and days on market are Realtor.com for September; existing-home sales and supply are the National Association of Realtors for August; new-home starts, supply and price are the Census Bureau for August; all via the St. Louis Fed. The payment is principal and interest over 30 years. Home loans are loans secured by 1–4 family homes. Yield is second-quarter interest on those loans, annualized, over their average balance; EveryBank’s is all banks added together. Bond figures are from the capital report, servicing from the mortgage report. Rates, on the economy page →