Rates are under a little pressure this week.

The 10-year Treasury has pushed to its highest level since January, which is keeping mortgage rates from improving for now. The frustrating part is that inflation has been fairly tame and the job market is clearly slowing, two things that would normally help rates. Apparently the bond market enjoys making this harder than necessary.

Housing is still telling an interesting story. Builders are pulling back on new construction, while the number of existing homes for sale remains well below pre-pandemic levels. In many markets, that limited supply continues to support home values even with higher rates.

Meanwhile, employment data keeps weakening. ADP is showing very little job growth recently. If that trend continues, it could eventually give the Fed and the bond market more reason to move toward lower rates.

Takeaway for Realtors: Rates may not be helping us today, but tight inventory and slowing new construction are important. If rates eventually move lower, buyer demand could return faster than new supply can be created. The buyers who understand that now may have more opportunity than the ones waiting for the “perfect” market.

— Brooks

Here's a listing-marketing move most agents are leaving on the table: your seller's neighbors.

Think about it: nobody's more curious about "what's happening on my street" than the people who live there. So when a "Just Listed" card shows up on their door, they scan it. Every single time.

Here's where it gets smart. That scan doesn't send them straight to Zillow. It sends them to a page you control first. From there, they get routed into the Zillow listing. Now every click, every save, every share from that neighbor traffic tells Zillow's algorithm one thing: this listing is hot. And Zillow rewards "hot" by pushing the listing higher for actual buyers searching the area.

Net result: your nosy neighbors are doing your ad spend for you. No paid reach required.

The mistake most agents make with this

If your QR code points directly to Zillow, you just handed that lead to Zillow, not to you. The algorithm boost still happens, but you get zero attribution and zero contact info out of it.

The version that actually works for you runs through three pieces, set up in the right order:

Skip the branded page and you're just donating traffic to the portal. Get all three pieces right, and you've built a repeatable system, one you can run on every listing, for every seller, for the rest of your career.

The takeaway: Clever positioning beats paid reach every time. Before your next listing goes live, make sure your door cards route through you, not around you.