Sunday Spotlight
Real Talk for Real Estate Pros · Capital Region
The pre-approval in your inbox is already wrong.
Rates moved 41 basis points in a year. Nobody went back and re-sent the letter.
This week's take
A pre-approval is a photograph, not a promise.
Somewhere in your inbox is a letter that says your buyer is good to $450,000. It has a real lender's logo on it, a real signature, and an expiration date a few weeks out. Your client has it saved to their phone. They quote the number at showings like it's a fact about themselves.
It was true the day it was written. It is not true today.
The 30-year fixed averaged 6.76% Thursday, the third straight weekly increase and the highest reading since June 2025. A year ago that same average was 6.35%. Forty-one basis points does not sound like news. It doesn't make a headline, it doesn't move anybody's needle on a podcast, and it never once triggered a lender to pick up the phone and revise a letter. What it does is quietly take about $17,000 of house off the table for every buyer shopping on a fixed payment.
Nobody tells them. That's the whole problem. The letter doesn't expire because the rate moved, it expires on a calendar date, and the number inside stays frozen at whatever the market was doing the afternoon it printed. Your buyer walks into a $440,000 listing in Delmar holding a $450,000 letter, writes the offer, and finds out at underwriting that the payment they agreed to in their head was built on last fall's math.
Back when I was selling, a pre-approval was a yes or a no to me. I filed it and stopped thinking about it. What I didn't understand then is that the letter is a snapshot of three moving things at once, and only one of them is the buyer. Their credit and income are reasonably stable. The rate is not, and it's the one nobody re-checks.
Worth sitting with the actual cost of not re-checking.
The expiration date on a pre-approval tells you when it stops being valid. It never tells you when it stopped being accurate.
The numbers that moved the letter
Where the rate actually sits
None of that is dramatic and that's exactly why it slips past everybody. A rate move big enough to make the news gets discussed with clients. A move this size just sits there and shrinks the offer nobody re-ran.
What 41 basis points costs, in dollars
The buyer who doesn't know yet. A couple got approved last fall to a $2,489 monthly principal and interest payment. At 6.35% that financed a $400,000 loan, and the letter in their hand still says $400,000.
Same payment at 6.76% finances about $383,000. Their ceiling dropped roughly $17,000 and their letter never changed a character. In Albany County, where homes are going in 15 days at 102.9% of list, $17,000 is the difference between winning the house and being the second-best offer on it.
Here's what makes it worse. The overage doesn't show up at offer, it shows up at underwriting, two or three weeks in, after the inspection is paid for and the movers are booked.
Illustration only, 30-year fixed principal and interest, using the published averages cited above. Excludes taxes, insurance, and mortgage insurance. Not a quote, not an offer, not a commitment to lend. Every file prices differently.
The fix takes about ten minutes and costs nothing. Re-running a pre-approval is not a new application, it's not a new credit pull in most cases, and it doesn't restart anything. It updates one number so your buyer is shopping against the market that exists.
Nobody loses a house because the rate went up. They lose it because the letter didn't say so.
What to do with it this week
For realtors
Check the date on every letter in your pipeline.
Not the expiration date. The date it was issued. Anything written more than 60 days ago was priced in a different market, and anything from spring is meaningfully off. It takes one pass through your active buyers to find out which of them are shopping on a number that no longer exists.
Send me the ones you're unsure about and I'll re-run them same day, with the current rate and a clean letter back to you. No new application, no drama for your client, and you stop writing offers on stale math.
For buyers
Ask what rate your approval was built on.
Most buyers have never asked and most letters don't say. If the answer is anything from spring, your real number is lower than the one on the paper. Better to know that before you fall in love with a house at the top of the range.
The useful question isn't "how much am I approved for." It's "what's my payment at today's rate, and what purchase price keeps it there." Get that number in writing and re-check it monthly while you're shopping.
For sellers
An old letter is a weaker offer than it looks.
When you're comparing offers, a pre-approval from four months ago carries real risk that the buyer's ceiling has moved since. Two offers can look identical on paper and only one of them has been verified against the market you're selling into.
Have your agent ask when each letter was issued and whether the buyer has been re-approved recently. It's a fair question, it takes a day to answer, and it tells you which offer is actually going to close.
Penny's Corner
Words of wisdom, from under Dad's desk
Dad says a number from four months ago is not a number anymore. I have learned this about the food bowl. You check it again. Every time.
From the closing table
Deals that close on schedule aren't an accident. These are the people who lived it, in their own words, from Google, Zillow, Facebook and Experience.com.
One move this week
Open your pipeline and sort by the letter date.
"Want to re-run your approval before we go out again? Rates moved a little since yours was written and I'd rather know your real number than guess at it."
That text takes 15 seconds and it's the whole play. It doesn't alarm anybody, it doesn't sound like a pitch, and it makes you the agent who caught something before it cost the client a house.
Forward me the ones who say yes. Updated letter back the same day, current rate on it, and the purchase price that holds their payment where they want it.
If you've got a buyer under contract right now and you're not sure their approval is current, that's a five minute phone call and worth making today rather than next week. Call me.
Brian Marchand
