With interest rates holding steady, many expect that the Fed won’t lower rates at its meeting later this month. For people who’ve been waiting to buy a house, that’s not particularly welcome news. 

Still, even if the Fed hasn’t been slashing the federal funds rates the way some expected, mortgage rates have been trending downward since a peak in late 2023. By showing current rates on your website, you can be the bearer of good news. Just as importantly, you can help waiting would-be buyers keep a finger on the pulse of what’s going on in the market.

The market outlook for 2026 — and why current rates matter

The optimal time to buy a house was probably 100 years ago. Even homebuyers who scored bottom-of-the-barrel interest rates a few years ago paid what many considered to be high home sale prices. 

Then, throughout 2022 and 2023, mortgage rates climbed considerably. People who had waited, hoping for lower home prices, were probably kicking themselves. 

Today, both mortgage rates and home prices have somewhat leveled off. Experts like the ones at the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and Redfin are saying this is a decently good time to buy. 

The chief economist at the NAR expects wage growth to exceed equity growth this year, giving people more purchasing power. The inventory pressure we’ve seen in recent years is also trending in the right direction for would-be buyers. All in all, for people who’ve been waiting to buy, 2026 could be the right time to make a move.  

That leaves potential homebuyers who want to wait on optimal timing in a bit of a tricky scenario. Big movements in terms of rates and home prices aren’t particularly likely. Instead, getting the best deal they can means tracking the minor movements in rates. 

That’s where you come in. By highlighting currently available rates, you become a resource these people use to stay informed. That makes your website one they visit regularly, helping you become a trusted source in their mind. When they decide they’re ready to take steps toward buying, your lending institution should have primary positioning. 

Giving people what they want

There’s one key here: current rates. Since finessing the timing on making moves means watching for minor rate movements, you need to offer real-time data. 

You can keep your rate tables updated on your website in one of two ways:

• Manually: This is the old-fashioned way of doing things, and it still works. You can task one team member with updating rates every day, or you might rotate that responsibility throughout your staff. Either way, this eats in your overhead. The more rate tables you have on your site, the more burdensome this becomes. 
• Automatically: Maintaining a rate table doesn’t have to mean a daily to-do for your team. Instead, you can use technology to feed data from your product pricing engine directly onto the rate table on your website.

Here at BankingBridge, we make rate tables specifically designed to update automatically. We integrate with a wide range of pricing engines, including Optimal Blue, Polly, Loansifter, Mortech, Lender Price, and more. 

When you sync data from your pricing engine with your website, you continually offer live rates to leads. People are seeking this info out — and if you don’t provide it, they’ll go elsewhere. The majority of the leading national lenders have this info on their websites. You don’t want to lose business to them, and showcasing your own rates keeps you in play. 

Plus, we’ve configured our rate tables to:

• Allow website visitors to shop different loan options configured to their down payment amount, location, loan type, and other personal criteria
• Feed through any fee information you’ve itemized in your pricing engine
• Make it easy for people to sign up for rate alert emails
• Showcase reviews of your company (e.g., from Google or Zillow) to further build trust (this is optional and best applied when you have review averages of four stars or more)

All of this puts the power squarely in the hands of the borrower — right where they want it. You get a way to become a trustworthy source of information without anyone on your team having to do any extra work. 

Better still, the rate table can become a lead generation tool. With a button that says something like “Get a personalized rate quote,” you can connect the website visitor to a lead workflow. This captures the lead’s information and feeds that to both your CRM and the appropriate loan officer. 

Bonus: Help people get their dream rate

Some people don’t mind the work of continually checking rates so they can pinpoint the right time to take next steps. Others would be thrilled to have you do that work for them.

That’s why we offer Dream Rate. 

This tool lets you set the potential borrower’s target rate in your CRM. This can be based on what they tell you or what your loan officer decides is right (e.g., they might set the dream rate 1% below a current borrower’s rate when they’re open to a refi). 

Then, Dream Rate continually scans your pricing engine. If/when a borrower hits their Dream Rate, it automatically alerts both their loan officer and the borrower. The email the borrower gets is branded to your company and complete with information about what their loan could look like. 

Deploying Dream Rate gives your team a low-lift way to keep waiting would-be homebuyers in your pipeline. You can let that person know your team will continually monitor rates for them. And then you can do precisely that — without adding extra tasks to anyone on your team’s desk. 

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Potential homebuyers still have a lot of uncertainty about today’s rate environment. That’s creating an opportunity for your lending institution. By providing them with the latest rates, you slot yourself in as a trusted resource. That should make you one of their top choices when they decide they’re ready to act. 

To explore rate tables that automatically update, Dream Rate, and other tools your team can use to give today’s borrowers what they want, get in touch. Book some time with our team today.