Short, dated market updates connecting current rate, inflation and housing data to fix-and-flip, DSCR, construction, multifamily and portfolio financing decisions.
The current market updates are on the daily brief
New updates post to the ACP Daily Brief as soon as they are written — three times a week plus a Sunday recap. Subscribe by RSS. This page holds the Investor Guides and the August archive.
Investor Guides
Four Doors, One Hidden Coverage Problem
A four-condo package at $345,000 with $3,400 of rent in place. HOA dues and property taxes run 43% of stabilized rent, which puts DSCR at 0.81 today and 1.15 once the vacant unit leases — still short of a 1.20 target. Why door count is not cash flow, with the full PITIA and NOI math and a two-page PDF summary.
Choosing Your Strategy and Your Market
Texas flip margins ran 5.6% gross in Q1 2026 against 25.4% nationally. Three strategies in the order the data supports them, how to run a deal from both a lending and a profitability position, the six costs that decide every project, and where the opportunities are.
Why Are More Homes Sitting on the Market?
Active listings are up 3.6% while new listings are flat — inventory is building because homes take longer to get under contract, not because more owners are selling. Where investor deals come from in a market like this.
Market Updates — August Archive
Inflation Ran Hot and the Market Moved Toward a Hike — But Appreciation Is the Number That Should Worry You
July PCE landed this morning and it was not friendly. Headline PCE rose 0.2% on the month and 3.7% year over year; core PCE rose 0.2% and 3.3% annually, hotter than forecast and 1.3 points above the Fed’s target. Consumer spending pulled back in the same report. Within hours the market-implied probability of a September rate hike moved to roughly 44%, up from about 36% before the print. Three FOMC members already voted to hike in July. Chair Warsh has declined to offer forward guidance, which means the data is the guidance — and he delivers his first Jackson Hole address as Chair this Friday, the last real signal before the September 15–16 FOMC meeting.
Against that, the mortgage picture looks calmer than it is. Freddie Mac’s survey has the 30-year fixed at 6.65% for the week ending August 20, down a second straight week from 6.67%, with the 15-year at 5.95%. But the survey peaked at 6.69% on August 6 and opened July at 6.43%. Two weeks of easing inside a two-month climb is not a trend, and the 10-year Treasury — which is what DSCR and take-out pricing actually tracks — closed at 4.70% on August 24. We quote off where the 10-year sits on the day, not off the weekly survey print.
The rate, though, is not the number that should change how you underwrite. NAR put July existing-home sales at a 4.06 million annual pace, down 1.7% on the month and up 0.7% on the year, with inventory at 1.54 million units — 4.6 months of supply — and a median 29 days on market. In the South, sales fell 3.1% month over month to a 1.86 million pace, flat year over year, with the median at $371,700 on 0.9% annual appreciation. Yesterday’s S&P Cotality Case-Shiller release said the same thing from another direction: the national index gained just 1.5% year over year in June, while Dallas fell 0.66% and Tampa fell 1.19%. The Northeast and Midwest are carrying the national number. The Sunbelt is not.
Put that against a carry cost and the problem becomes arithmetic rather than sentiment. Take a $300,000 exit in the South. At 0.9% a year, six months of appreciation is about $1,350. A $225,000 bridge at 11% interest-only runs roughly $2,060 a month — about $12,400 across those same six months, before taxes and insurance. Appreciation is covering roughly three weeks of a six-month hold. In Dallas it covers nothing and moves against you.
For four years an investor could be wrong about purchase price and be rescued by the market between closing and listing. That subsidy is gone. It will not cover a bad buy, it will not cover a rehab budget that came in light, and it will not cover an extra ninety days on market. The entire margin now has to exist on the day you close.
Three things worth doing before your next offer. First, find the price-per-foot line in the submarket you are buying in. Pull every active single-family listing within a half mile of your subject, plot price per square foot against days on market, and look for where the curve breaks — in most metros there is a level above which market time roughly triples. Underwrite your exit below that line, not at the top of the comp range. This holds in the major metros and the regional ones alike; only the location of the line changes. Second, comp against the subdivision, not the radius. A half-mile circle in most metro markets crosses three or four subdivisions with different builders, lot sizes and buyer pools. Derive your price per foot inside your own subdivision first, then sanity-check it against the wider ring. Third, get the rehab number from someone who has to stand behind it. The single most common reason a deal we review does not work is a renovation budget estimated from photographs. On a 1960s house a full cosmetic runs $45 to $70 per foot before you touch a roof, a system or a pool.
Twenty-six percent of July’s buyers paid cash and 14% were investors or second-home buyers. That competition has not gone anywhere. What has gone is the margin for error on the buy. ACP Lending originates and structures fix-and-flip, bridge, DSCR rental, ground-up construction, multifamily and portfolio financing on single-family and small residential investment property in major and regional metro markets nationwide. If you want a second set of eyes on a deal before you write the offer — comps, repair scope, exit pricing — that review is free, and it is the most useful thing we do. Run the numbers yourself in the Deal Calculator or the DSCR Calculator, then request a pre-approval or send us the deal.
Mortgage Rates Eased, But Long Bond Yields Are Sending a Different Signal
Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey put the 30-year fixed at 6.65% for the week ending August 20, down two basis points, with the 15-year at 5.95% (Freddie Mac PMMS). But that survey is measured Monday through Wednesday — before long-dated Treasury yields broke higher into the weekend. The 10-year Treasury closed Friday at 4.73%, its highest level since January 2025, while the 30-year Treasury pushed above 5.27%, a level not seen since 2007. Heavy Treasury and AI-sector debt issuance, rising federal deficit spending, and a Treasury buyback program that briefly pulled yields down midweek all factored in before Thursday’s selloff erased the gain and Friday added to it.
That gap matters for anyone financing on a rate tied to the long end rather than the Fed funds rate. DSCR and permanent take-out pricing track the 10-year more closely than the overnight rate the Fed controls, so a Treasury move like this week’s can show up in a term sheet before it shows up in a PMMS headline. Markets read Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s July press conference as dovish, but his prepared remarks pointed the other way — there is “no soft inflation target,” and the Committee “will not hesitate to act” — and the July minutes showed officials warning that hikes may be needed. That gap raises the stakes for next week: July PCE lands Wednesday, August 26, and Warsh gives his first major address as Chair at the Jackson Hole Symposium (August 27–29), the last real signal before the September 15–16 FOMC meeting. We price DSCR and take-out quotes off where the 10-year sits today, not off this week’s PMMS print, and build in room for the spread to move before closing.
Permits Rose, Starts Fell — and 279,000 Approved Homes Have No Shovel in the Ground
July’s national numbers went in opposite directions. Building permits ran at a 1,443,000 annual rate, up 5.0% from June, while housing starts fell 12.4% to 1,239,000 — the sharpest monthly drop in over a year (Census and HUD, released August 18). The backlog is where the two meet: 279,000 units were authorized but not started at the end of July, up 10.3% from a year earlier.
Houston is a separate case, and it runs the other way. The metro authorized 29,214 units in the first half of 2026 against 34,993 a year earlier — a 16.5% decline — even as Houston remains the country’s leading single-family permit market. Set that against a record 40,750 active MLS listings and 5.5 months of inventory in July, and a permit starts to look less like a schedule and more like an option. We underwrite ground-up and bridge requests against the exit that standing supply implies, not against the entitlement.
Fix-and-Flip Investors Must Account for Builder Incentives
Sixty-three percent of builders used sales incentives in August, and 35% cut prices outright — by an average of 6% (NAHB and Wells Fargo Housing Market Index, August 17). On a $340,000 Houston median, that is roughly $20,000 of concession sitting between a rehabbed house and the new build down the street.
That concession does not appear in the list-price comps most flip budgets are built on. It appears at closing. Builder confidence in the South fell two points to 31 in August, the weakest of any region, and weak confidence is where incentives get most aggressive. Margins have already compressed nationally: 25.4% gross ROI on a $66,000 average gross profit in the first quarter, down from 29.6% and $74,172 a year earlier, with Houston at a 7.2% profit margin (ATTOM). When we underwrite an after-repair value, we haircut it against the incentive-adjusted new-build price in the same submarket rather than the sticker.
Weekly Recap & Week Ahead
Rates held steady. Freddie Mac’s 30-year fixed averaged 6.67% for the week ending August 13, down two basis points, while the 10-year Treasury closed the week at 4.69%, up about five basis points. July CPI came in at 3.4% year over year with core at 2.5%. Producer prices were flat for the month but 4.7% higher than a year ago. Retail sales fell 0.6% against expectations of a small gain, and consumer sentiment printed 51.0 against 55.0 expected.
The week ahead brings builder confidence Monday, July housing starts and permits Tuesday, and the July FOMC minutes Wednesday. The backdrop worth holding on to: the Fed has held its target range at 3.50%–3.75% for five straight meetings, three members dissented in favor of a hike on July 29, and the market ended the week pricing roughly a one-in-three chance of an increase in September. The forward curve is not offering cheap money to anyone underwriting a twelve-month exit.
Inflation and Financing Costs
July CPI eased to 3.4% year over year, but the composition matters more than the headline. Core inflation, excluding food and energy, is 2.5%. Most of the gap is energy, still 14.7% higher than a year ago despite falling 1.5% in July. Producer prices are running hotter at 4.7% — and producer prices reach a rehab budget long before they reach a grocery bill.
Financing costs did not follow inflation down. SOFR sat at 3.62% through mid-August, the 10-year Treasury traded between 4.63% and 4.72%, and the 30-year conforming mortgage averaged 6.67%, a spread of roughly 200 basis points over the 10-year. The Fed has held at 3.50%–3.75% since July with three dissents arguing for a hike. Floating-rate bridge debt is priced off a base the market currently thinks is more likely to rise than fall, so we structure short-term financing with a rate-up sensitivity in the take-out rather than a rate-down assumption.
Construction Prices Rose 2.2%: Why Investors Need to Stress-Test Both the Project and the Exit
The figure is precise and easy to misread. Final demand construction prices — what contractors charge — rose 2.2% in July alone, seasonally adjusted, while overall producer prices were flat for the month (BLS Producer Price Index, released August 13). Over twelve months, construction prices are up 5.2%.
Materials moved differently: up 0.4% for the month and 5.0% year over year, the strongest annual reading since December 2022, with softwood lumber up 7.4% in July and 17.3% over the year, and energy inputs to construction up 33.1% year over year (NAHB analysis of BLS data). The practical consequence is that a rehab or ground-up budget quoted sixty to ninety days ago is already stale. We size construction holdbacks and contingency against current input costs and test the schedule as hard as the rate, because a budget overrun and a delayed exit are the same problem arriving from two directions.
CPI Eases to 3.4%
Headline CPI rose 3.4% over the twelve months through July and 0.1% for the month. Core inflation was 2.5%, which means most of the headline is energy — down 1.5% in July but still 14.7% above a year ago (BLS, released August 12).
For anyone underwriting rental cash flow, shelter is the line to read. Shelter rose 3.2% year over year, rent of primary residence 2.9%, and owners’ equivalent rent 3.2%. Rent growth is no longer outrunning general inflation. On the same morning, Houston reported a record 40,750 active listings and a $340,000 median price, up just 0.6% from a year earlier. We underwrite DSCR requests with rent escalators at or below CPI, and we do not treat shelter-driven NOI growth as a cushion.
Have a Deal You Want Reviewed?
Send the property address and available project information to steve@acp-lending.com or call/text Steve Waller at 936-522-8951.
Get Started Deal CalculatorGet new ACP reports by email
Every Investor Brief and market report goes out by email the morning it is published. The market data, and what it means for your financing. No rates, no pitch, and you can stop them in one click.
ACP Lending, 10 East Honey Grove Place, Spring, TX 77382. We do not sell or share this list. Privacy Policy.