The Truth About Mortgage Rates and Debt in Today’s Housing Market

37 trillion in debt. Gold shooting through the roof. And the Fed's out here trying to trick the bond market with treats.Welcome to October, the scariest month yet for the US Economy. This is the Texas Real Estate and Finance podcast, the place where we track the housing market, the money printers, and all the madness in between.It's part news, part therapy, and just enough sarcasm to keep it a little bit fun.I'm Mike Mills at North Texas Mortgage Banker with Service First Mortgage and AI Driven Market obsessed and here to help you make sense of the chaos without losing your sense of humor. I've been gone for a little while, but I am back and ready to roll. And this is your Texas Real Estate market update for the week of October 20, 2025.Welcome to Spooky season, and honestly, right now, nothing scarier than the US balance sheet. Forget ghosts and goblins. Try staring down 37 trillion in debt while your mortgage rate follows it around like a haunted shadow.This week, we're pulling the mask off the real monster behind rates, massive government borrowing. We'll talk about how Washington might try to summon liquidity by revaluing gold and even using crypto stablecoins to $Alive.It's creative, it's desperate, and it's definitely not in the Fed's trick or treat. Back then. In the housing market, we'll look at why everyone waiting for a big rate cut might be falling for the ultimate Halloween illusion.Affordability is still terrifying, Texas is shifting fast, and the rate cut trap could sneak up on buyers who think 5% rates solve everything. Then we're diving into the Chat GPT project, how realtors can build their own AI assistant that guides buyers from pre approval to closing.It's like having a digital transaction coordinator who never sleeps, never forgets a deadline, and actually sounds like you. And in Mike's mind, today we are going off the rails. From gold spikes and rent fixing settlements to NASA planning to nuke the moon.Because at this point, the universe might just be trying to tell us something. So grab your pumpkin spice lock your rate, and let's walk through this haunted economy.Now, before we get rolling, let me pull back the curtain just for a second. This podcast isn't some corporate production or marketing department project.It's just me, a mic, and a mission to make sense of this crazy market as often as I can. And while I love doing it, this show runs on relationships. Mortgages pay the bills. But the podcast is how I meet people I get to work with.So if you enjoy what you hear, help me Keep it going, subscribe, share and leave a quick review. If you have some time. And more importantly, if you or someone you know is thinking about buying, selling or refinancing, send them my way.That's how this thing stays sustainable.So if something in today's episode sparks a question, or if you want to see how AI or even mortgage strategies can fit into your business, my info's in the show notes. Or you can just Google me. Pretty easy to find.All right, let's get into it, because this week's episode has more financial horror stories than a Halloween marathon. And and we're about to unmask them all. So, as always, we start with my favorite question every single week. Mike. What are the rates?By the way, I hear that more often than my kids asking what's for dinner? And just like dinner, the answer depends on what's currently burning. Some weeks it's inflation, and some weeks it's jobs.And lately, it's the entire US Balance sheet. So according to the Mortgage News Daily index, as of October 22, 2025, the 30 year fixed conventional rate sits at about 6.17.The average 15 year conventional rate sits at about 5.73. The average 30 year FHA rate sits at 5.90. The average 30 year VA rate sits at about 5.91 and the average 30 year jumbo sitting around 6.10.Now these are market averages, not a quote. Your rate depends on your credit score, loan type and down payment.So talk to a licensed mortgage professional like me and find out what rate applies to you. And yes, fully CFPB approved. Though I'm pretty sure these days they're running the whole agency out of WeWork right now.Now let's talk about why rates keep acting like a toddler on a sugar high. It comes down to one simple number. 37 trillion. That is the current US tab.The government owes $37 trillion and is adding almost 2 trillion more this year alone. So that means that the treasury has to sell roughly 11 trillion in new bonds over the next 12 months.Nine trillion of that just to pay off the old debt that's coming due. It's the world's biggest balance transfer game and you and I are the co signers.See, when the government borrows that much, it needs lenders, people and countries willing to buy Treasuries. But demand right now is weak. China and Japan are stepping back, global funds are diversifying, and domestic buyers are just tapped out.So what happens? Well, in order for the treasury to stimulate demand, they have to sweeten the deal with higher yields.So that pushes the 10 year treasury rate higher. And since mortgage rates follow the 10 year treasury, your 30 year fixed jumps right along with it.Because even 1% rise in yield is going to add about 370 billion to America's annual interest bill. And we're already spending a trillion a year just on interest as it is.That's 20 cents of every tax dollar that you send to Washington gone before it fixes a single pothole. Now here's where it's going to start to get creative.And when I say creative, it's in the same way that using duct tapes to fix your brakes is creative. So plan a gold reevaluation. See, the government owns about 261 million ounces of gold, or so we're told they do.But it's still valued on the books at $42 an ounce. And that's a relic from the Nixon era.So if they simply reprice that gold to today's market value, roughly $4,200 an ounce, the treasury could instantly create about 1.1 trillion in accounting money. And before you say you think that sounds insane, remember that we've done this before.In 1934, President Roosevelt repriced gold from 20 an ounce to 35 an ounce to fund the New Deal programs during the Great Depression. It was legal then and it's still legal now. It's just highly unusual. And the rest of the world might not love another surprise dollar reset.But if we do that, poof. All of a sudden we have liquidity.Technically legal, but still a bit like bragging you're wealthy because your baseball card collection suddenly went viral on ebay. What about plan B? That's called the stablecoin shuffle. See through the new genius act.Stablecoins, those are digital dollars in crypto must be backed by real US dollars or short term Treasuries. Translation? Every crypto company that wants to issue digital cash now has the option to buy dollars or US government debt.And that's about $280 billion in today's stablecoin market. In a market that's projected to hit 2 trillion in just a few years. So basically, Washington found a way to turn crypto traders into bond buyers.Clever. Absolutely. Sustainable. Not so much. It's just financial engineering that makes Enron look old school.So all of this is happening in order to keep borrowing costs from spinning out of control. Too late. These are not actual solutions to stop spending, of course, because that would be crazy.But the more tricks that they use to fund debt, the more they inflate the money supply. And that drives asset prices higher. So when you see real estate, stocks, Bitcoin, and even gold rising to all time highs, that's not random optimism.It's investors running for hard assets before the next dollar dilution. You see, mortgage rates aren't just a housing story anymore.They're a reflection of how desperate our government has become to borrow its way out of this debt trap. So until demand for Treasuries outpaces supply or spending gets under control. Good luck with that. Expect mortgage rates to stay pretty stubborn.Maybe they'll drift a little bit lower.But don't expect any miracles anytime soon because as long as Uncle Sam keeps using the nation's credit card like it's got airline miles, you your mortgage rate is going to feel the hanging. All right, let's move on to our buyer tip of the week. So everybody's waiting for that magic headline. Rates are below 6%. But here's the truth.When that number finally does pop up, it won't feel magical. It's going to feel like trying to buy concert tickets after Taylor Swift announces a surprise show. You blink and the good houses will be gone.So here's the move instead. Don't wait for the drop. Act like it already happened. Get your loan fully underwritten, not just pre approved. Decide your non negotiables now.And if a home checks 80% of your boxes, then write the offer. Because once rates hit below 6%, your competition doubles and your negotiating power starts to disappear.Because right now you can still ask for repairs, closing costs, and maybe even rate buy downs. But when the floodgates open, you'll be waiving contingencies and offering your firstborn to the seller again. So use the quiet time to win.Realtors, this is your cue. Sort your pipeline by Ready now? Send this simple message. Don't wait for rates under 6%. Here's your action plan.Tell them that you can help get them fully underwritten this week for three homes and be ready to strike While everyone else is still waiting for the CNN to confirm the news. Move first, not fastest, and you'll own the weekend. While everyone else is still refreshing their mortgage apps.All right, let's move into a little housing data. So right now, everyone's waiting for that magic fed rate cut that's going to fix housing.It's kind of like believing a juice cleanse is going to fix your credit score. It sounds good, but you'll still owe the money when it's over. So here's where we really are right now.The 30 year fix sits right somewhere around the low sixes. Even after the last round of Fed cuts, mortgage rates only slipped about to 6.1%.So that still leaves the average monthly payment at around 2650amonth, nearly double what it was during the pre pandemic norm.So while the Fed plays with short term rates, the long end of the curve, the 10 year treasury that actually drives mortgage rates is doing its own thing. And lately that thing looks suspiciously like a protest march. The result? Home buyer demand is scraping along near 2009 levels.The rate cuts that were supposed to bring buyers back barely nudged affordability. And for things to feel normal again, about a $1900 monthly payment, prices would have to fall 15% and rates dropped to roughly 4.1%.Translation of all this, don't hold your breath because right now, nationally, prices are still at record highs. But the map is a little split.About one third of US Markets are sliding, while two thirds, mostly the Northeast and the Midwest, are still creeping up. Inventory is up to about 7.8% from last year, which helps, but we're still nowhere near pre pandemic supply.Now here in Texas, the market's a little bit of a mixed breed. Rodeo Austin is still the bruised bull rider, still about 23% down from his 2022 peak.DFW is tightening into a buyer's market with more listings and softening prices.Houston's the cockroach to Texas housing and survives everything and still keeps posting slight gains in San Antonio stays steady, and it's still the most affordable of the big four. And roughly a third of active DFW listings have taken price cuts. Right now, sellers are blinking first. What about builders?Well, they're feeling it too. Confidence just hit its lowest September reading since 2011.Builders right now are discounting pretty aggressively, about 15% off the sticker price and offering rate buy downs as low as 4.99% just to move some inventory. That tells you everything you need to know. Incremental rate relief isn't fixing demand. Incentives are.Now, here's where buyers start to get tripped up. You see, everyone's waiting for the rates to fall into the fives before they jump in.But that's what we call the rate cut trap, because when that happens, demand will surge, maybe even overnight. Competition comes roaring back and prices begin to spike even more than they have been.You see that cheaper rate gets eaten up by more expensive house. You pay the same, only now you're fighting two or Three or four or even five other offers.So if you find a home that fits 80% of your needs today, even with higher rates, if you can buy it, negotiate hard and use concessions. See, right now, sellers are open to paying closing costs or funding buy downs.That $10,000 concession is worth more in your pocket than a $10,000 price drop ever will be. Sellers will give these incentives when they don't have offers to choose from.But as soon as there is even one more offer on a home, that incentive starts to dry up really quickly. What's the big picture here? Well, government debts exploding, the Fed keeps printing money and the dollar gets weaker every single day.Assets, not cash, are what survive this kind of cycle. Gold, stocks, crypto, and yes, real estate. So while everyone else waits for perfect timing, remember, the rate you marry can be refinanced.The price you pay cannot. So owning something tangible, land, bricks and a roof, that is your hedge against the madness in Washington and the money printer.In the meantime, focus on leverage, not luck. The market rewards action and punishes hesitation. That is your housing market reality for this week.All right, let's move into our agent tip of the week. So right now, every agent's got listings. The smart ones turn their listings into lead engine.Now, if you're still posting three photos in a caption that says new listing DM for details, you are leaving money on the table and probably sanity as well. See, buyers want to see the experience before they schedule the showing. So here's the move.Add a video pre qualification filter for every new listing. Shoot a short 30 to 60 second walkthrough on your phone and even narrate yourself if you want to.And then add a 3D or virtual tour link in your listing description. You just filtered your leads so anyone who still reaches out after watching that video has already seen the layout.So the kitchen size and the backyard slope that turns into qualified interest leads and fewer tire kicker showings. It doesn't got to be Spielberg, just natural lighting, your phone and your voice. Start with the three features that people ask the most about.Kitchen, backyard, and the primary suite. Then end it with a quick call to action. Watch the 3D tour before you book your show. Now, this is not about fancy editing.It's about frictionless marketing. You'll save hours, impress your sellers, and show prospects that you're a tech forward agent in the neighborhood.Because everyone's got listings right now and the pros are the ones that turn those into lead generators with just a simple one minute video. Next up, welcome to Mike's mind where gold predicts recessions. NASA wants to nuke the moon, and the Fed is printing monopoly money once again.So let's start with the money, because lately it's been doing backflips. Gold is up another $170 an ounce, and no one knows why. No wars, no big announcement, just poof. Everyone's buying gold again.So when gold moves without direct headlines, and it usually means the smart money sees something coming.And apparently that something doesn't fit into bank of America's PowerPoint, because their analysts say recession fears are at the lowest that they've been since 2022. What is it? Is everything fine? Or are we all quietly panic buying shiny rocks? Personally, I'm going with the shiny rocks.Meanwhile, the Fed is back to its favorite pastime, printing money. Over $300 billion was created last week to stabilize the banking system during the government shutdown.Yep, nothing says stable like a digital money printer in a Treasury department running on interns and vending machine coffee. And if that wasn't enough, the deficit just hit 1.8 trillion. Interest payments alone just passed $1 trillion for the year.So when people ask why mortgage rates are stubborn, well, there's your answer. Right now, the 10 year treasury and the national credit card bill are joined at the hip.The Fed can't cut much without making the debt balloon even bigger. Then there's the jobs data. ADP quietly revised August jobs number from plus 54,000 to to negative 3,000. That's not a typo.We didn't lose momentum, we lost jobs. But sure, let's all pretend that we're still in a growth cycle because bank of America said so. What about housing?Well, Gracetar and 25 other big property managers just agreed to pay 141 million to settle that rent fixing lawsuit over the real page algorithm. I've been talking about this one for over a year. And I'll say it again. When housing prices move in unison, that's not a free market.That's group chat economics. Right now, luxury sales are down. Non luxury sales are down. And the number of first time buyers has hit a record low.Millennials and Gen Z's aren't just priced out, they are tapped out. But hey, if you can't afford a 2500 square foot house, how about 700 square feet? Because Lennar is building micro homes in Princeton, Texas.160000 for your very own tiny slice of the American dream. So if you could fit a couch, a bed, and your emotional support, goldfish in there, then you're good to go.Right now at dfw, more than a third of the homes on the market have price cuts, which tells me that sellers are starting to meet reality. Reality is not offering full price anymore, at least for now.Now let's swing over to tech because Amazon Web Services had a massive outage that took down Snapchat, Reddit, Roblox, and Venmo. We all probably experienced it yesterday.Basically half the Internet took a nap except for Elon's X, which somehow stayed online and instantly became the world's newswire. And of course Elon couldn't resist tweeting through the entire chaos and community Notes actually had to fact check him mid meltdown.It's just another reminder that our entire digital life runs on about three server farms in Virginia, and if one blinks, we're all back to using pigeons and fax machines. Meanwhile, AI is having a glow up because Chat GPT can now connect to Spotify, Canva, Zillow, Shopify, and Etsy all inside one chat.It's officially become that friend who knows a guy for everything. The Real Estate agents Pay attention.When your chatbot starts helping buyers tour homes on Zillow while designing your Canva post, you either embrace it or you get replaced by it. And because no week is complete without cosmic weirdness, NASA is apparently thinking about nuking the moon. Not metaphorically. Literally.See, an asteroid might hit the moon in 2032, and they're considering a preventative detonation. Not to worry about, though, just humanity testing space explosives while the Fed's out printing more Monopoly money. What could go wrong?Speaking of cosmic The Interstellar Object 3i Atlas My favorite deep space mystery was spotted pulsing light in the Fibonacci sequence. 5813 can't make this up. Some say it's random, others think that it's a message.And conveniently, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory and Mars satellite both went offline right after because the government shut down. Total coincidence, I'm sure. Maybe the message is simple. Maybe they're telling us to stop messing things up.Or maybe it's just aliens with a sense of humor. Either way, I trust Three Eye Atlas more than most economists at this point.Just to round out all the madness, scientists successively used CRISPR to repair a human gene inside the body for the first time. So we're about one generation away from designer babies who can run a marathon code in python and refinance their own mortgage by the age of 12.Welcome to the future, where your Loan officer might be an AI, your landlord might be a bot, and your best financial advice might come from an asteroid blinking prime numbers in deep space. That's what's just been rattling around in Mike's mind for this week. I can't wait to see what fun next week brings.All right, moving on to our seller tip of the week. Here's a fun stat that most sellers don't realize. Dropping your price by 10 grand only saves the buyer about $65 a month.That's a nice dinner, not a life changer. But if you use that same ten grand towards a rate, buy down or closing costs, you can cut their payment by a few hundred dollars.Suddenly your listing goes from maybe to a must see to realtors. When that let's lower the price conversation comes up, hit the pause button. Suggest a closing cost buy down instead.Because it tackles the real problem payment, not just the price tag. Buyers aren't hunting for cheaper homes. They're hunting for affordable payments. And here's where you can tag a lender partner like me.Because right now we're offering a six month no payment program for buyers when the seller helps fund their closing costs. So imagine putting that on your flyer. Buy this home, no payments until spring.Going to get more clicks, more showings and faster offers without carving up your equity. The realtors build this into your next listing presentation. Bring a simple one page visual price drop versus payment drop.And when the seller sees $65 a month versus $300 a month, the light bulb will go off. Because in today's market, smart sells. Don't discount the home, discount the payment.All right, for our main story today, have you ever had a transaction coordinator who never slept, never forgot a deadline and didn't roll their eyes when a buyer texted them at midnight? Well, that's basically what Chat GPT projects can be. It's an AI partner that helps you manage your buyers from pre approval all the way to closing.See, most agents still think ChatGPT is just a fancy chat bot that writes listing descriptions. But when you turn it into a project, you're actually giving it memory, context and structure.You're creating an assistant that understands your buyers, tracks your process, and works alongside your Google tools to keep every deal moving. Because it's not replacing you, it is multiplying you. So how do these projects actually work? Well, let me be clear.ChatGPT projects don't come preloaded with real estate wisdom. They aren't out of the box. Jedi, buyer, transaction masters. They only know what you give them.So When I work with agents, the first thing I explain is this. You're not just chatting with AI, you are training it. You're building a digital version of how you already do business.And I even created a Realtor project template just for this process. And I built it so agents could plug themselves in quickly, upload their own materials and be up and running without starting from scratch.It's not instant, but it's simple once you see it. Here's what goes into the foundation. I give every agent who books a one on one with me a Realtor profile.This is what tells AI who you are, you, how you communicate, what markets you serve, who your referral partners are, and how your process works. When we build yours, we'll build and upload your profile so the AI speaks in your voice.It also comes with the Texas Realtor reference guide and this gives it context.All the websites and tools that you use every day, hard.comTREC and your MLS system supra zip forms that way when you ask it a question, it actually knows what you're talking about. We also include a buyer transaction timeline. It's a full step by step from pre approval to closing.The AI uses it to keep your clients on track and remind you of what's next. We also provide it with a Trek contract guide and a blank contract. One explains the form in plain English and the other one shows the form structure.Together they let AI walk you through the contract language or help you explain sections to buyers. We also include an email template library. They're pre written buyer emails. Offer accepted, inspection scheduled clear to close.That AI customizes in your tone using your profile. We have a buyer question checklist, the questions that you should cover in every buyer consultation.The AI uses it to prompt you so nothing gets missed. I also include project setup, instructions and best practices.It's a short guide that teaches the AI how to help you correctly and reminds you how to use it safely. Compliance cover and then finally market stats in an MLS guide. Instructions for pulling your own MLS data.The AI won't log in for you, but it can guide you through the right report and then analyze what you paste in. And that turns a blank chatgpt window into a functioning AI assistant built just for real estate. Now here's the part that most people miss.Your AI partner only knows what you upload. It doesn't read your mind or scrape your emails. You still feed it the information.Pre approval details from your lender, notes from your buyer consult. Inspection results, contract milestones. And this is where I Tell agents record your buyer consultation, not just for compliance, but for clarity.A short recording turned into a transcript becomes a living client file. It captures the buyer's goals, timelines and must haves in their own words.And once you upload that transcript, your AI can help you draft updates or reminders that sound like you. You wrote them and they inspired them. It remembers the little details, the dog, the fence, and the job transfer date.And here's another big bonus for recording all your client meetings. Each time you refine a message, correct a tone, or adjust phrasing, you are teaching the AI your personal communication style.That becomes your voice and style guide inside the project. And over time, it mirrors your tone automatically, whether it's an update, email or a market summary.That is why I build these systems for agents instead of giving random prompts. Because once your voice is trained, the AI stops sounding robotic and start sounding like you on your best day.So once the setup's done, everything tightens up. You still upload the info, but the routine day to day work begins to take less and less time.And time saving is the goal of anything that you're doing with this technology.Because this AI can generate transaction timelines in sync with Google Calendar, build task lists for each milestone, draft buyer updates using your templates and tone, and keep notes organized so you don't dig through text threads. So now it's not hands off automation. Although there are ways to do that as well. Maybe another topic for another day. This way is assisted precision.A few minutes of setup on the front end gives you hours back later. For most agents, that's the missing piece structure. They have the effort. They just need a system that runs with them instead of running against them.So here's the big takeaway. ChatGPT projects aren't about automating your job.They're about organizing your brain when you load them with the right files, you're building a living system that helps you guide buyers from the pre approval all the way to the closing table without missing a step or repeating yourself 50 times. It is structure that scales. You stay the human, the relationship, the judgment, the trust.The AI just helps you move faster, cleaner, and with more consistency. So if you're listening to this and thinking, okay, that sounds amazing, but there is no way I have time to build all that.Well, I got good news for you. I've already built a foundation for this project. When you schedule a one on one with me, I'll walk you through setting up your own ChatGPT project.Load in the reference docs and show you how to customize it to your brand invoice. So you'll walk away with a working AI partner that can help manage your buyers, your emails and your process.You bring your realtor profile and a willingness to learn and I'll bring the framework and the setup so just reach out. All my contact information is in the show notes.We'll spend some time together building your system and you'll see firsthand how this technology can take hours off your week and give your clients a better experience, start to finish. I've already helped over a hundred agents build this and got them moving down the path to AI timesave and I can do the same for you.So just hit me up and I can help you too. Because here's the truth. AI won't replace realtors, but the realtors who learn to work with AI will absolutely replace the ones who don't.All right guys, that wraps up this week's haunted tour through the economy, from the 37 trillion debt monster to the spooky truth about mortgage rates, AI assistance, and the housing market that refuses to pick a side. So if you made it this far, you were officially ahead of 99% of the market.Keep using that knowledge, whether it's buying, selling, or just keeping your business sharp, understanding the why behind the numbers is going to be your edge. So if you enjoyed the show, hit subscribe, share it with a friend, leave a quick review.That's how we keep growing this thing and build real connections. So thanks for spending part of your week with me and until next time, be good humans. Just keep grinding.Because life is what you make it, so make it great. See ya.