📉 Don't let 2026 YoY comp noise ruin your lowball offers

SUBJECT LINE & PREHEADER

• 📉 Don't let 2026 YoY comp noise ruin your lowball offers
• 🚨 Labor Day distorted the comps (how to make $20k off confused sellers)
• 🏚️ Rates bounced, ARMs hit a 5-week high, and sellers are dreaming
• Preheader: HousingWire caught the YoY comp glitch. Here's how Cory uses it to steal deals this week.

TOGETHER WITH

🤝🔥 Hard Money Heroes Together with Kiavi

Sellers expecting 2021 pricing Me showing up with fast Kiavi funding and zero chill

Fast capital lets you close on real math while sellers are still daydreaming.

PRESENTED BY KIAVI 🏦

If you're still waiting 45 days for a traditional bank loan officer to inspect your credit score and ask for your tax returns from 2019, you're losing deals to operators who close before your loan processor finishes their morning coffee.

Kiavi provides capital built specifically for real estate investors funding fix-and-flip acquisitions and long-term rental portfolios. You get reliable execution, competitive leverage, and a digital platform that doesn't make you fax paper bank statements like it's 1998. Stop letting slow debt kill high-margin flips.

EXPECTED OUTCOME: Secure capital to fund property acquisitions and scale your real estate portfolio. THE DECISION THIS HELPS YOU MAKE: Which lender to use for financing fix-and-flip or rental property deals. NOT FOR YOU IF: You are looking for long-term owner-occupied consumer mortgages or 0% down uncollateralized land speculation.

Proof: ask them for a funded example — we requested one.

Fund Your Next Deal With Kiavi

THE OPEN ☕

🤡🏷️ Delusional Pricing Alert

Good morning.

Sellers are currently hallucinating. They look at last year’s late-summer comps, ignore the calendar glitch sitting in the economic data, and think their 1978 original-kitchen rancher is worth a quarter-million over reality.

We’re putting a hard stop to that this morning.

— Cory Boatright & the REIPROFITS team

🖼️ MEME OF THE WEEK

Seller: Look at the year-over-year pending comp from September 2025!
Investor: Bro, that was Labor Day weekend. Everyone was drinking light beer and signing contracts.
When sellers treat calendar noise like structural appreciation, your counter-offer needs to land like a sledgehammer.

Seller lists a 1978 original kitchen rancher "I know what I have, $250k over comps"

Calendar noise isn't structural appreciation—don't pay up for avocado countertops.

MARKETS AT A GLANCE

📊🎢 Tape Reading Time

At a glance: 🥇 Top mover Gold (GC) +1.06% · 🥀 Laggard REITs (VNQ) -0.66%

Live market data via Yahoo Finance — as of Sep 7, 2026, 1:04 AM EDT. Equity/ETF levels are last close or latest trade; Treasuries are quoted in yield with change in basis points. Mood is a read on the daily plus 5-session move, not investment advice.

Checking the market tape today Crude oil pumping while treasury yields test 4.78%

When yields test walls and oil spikes, cash-flow underwriting gets real quick.

IN THIS ISSUE 📋

📋⚡ The Cheat Sheet

In this issue:

• Why a 2025 Labor Day glitch is distorting 2026 comps (and how to underwrite through it).
• How the 4.78% 10-Yr yield print just pushed ARM demand to a 5-week high.
• The 60-second prompt that shreds listing agent fluff before you submit an offer.

Read time: 8 minutes.

Listing agent writes 5 paragraphs of pure fluff My 60-second AI prompt shredding it instantly

Stop reading novel agent descriptions and start underwriting raw data.

THE 30-SECOND ESPRESSO SHOT 🚨

☕🔥 Espresso Math Check

Listen up {{first_name}}, if you're taking year-over-year pending home sales data at face value this September, you're about to overpay for real estate.

• The YoY Comp Trap: Labor Day calendar shifts between 2025 and 2026 created a massive artificial drop in pending contract numbers. Real demand is flat, but sellers think inventory is starving.
• Debt Moves: The 10-Year Treasury yield pushed to 4.784%, forcing buyers into Adjustable-Rate Mortgages (ARMs), which just hit a 5-week high share of total applications.
• Rent Growth Backing Up: Apartment rent declines have officially bottomed out as new multifamily deliveries cool down—meaning cash-flowing SFRs are getting a tailwind on lease renewals.

☕ Got 3 minutes? Keep drinking the full cup below...

Uninformed buyers looking at raw YoY pending sales Real investors adjusting for the Labor Day calendar shift

Don't overpay just because amateur buyers can't read a calendar.

THE 30-SECOND DASHBOARD 📊

📈📉 Dashboard Reality Check

+------------------------+-----------------+---------------+
| Metric                 | Current Level   | 30-Day Trend  |
+------------------------+-----------------+---------------+
| 30-Yr Fixed Mortgage   | 6.88% (Est.)    | 🔼 +12 bps    |
| 10-Yr Treasury Yield   | 4.784%          | 🔼 +6 bps     |
| Median US Home Price   | $418,500 (Est.) | 🔻 -0.4%      |
+------------------------+-----------------+---------------+

30-year fixed sitting at 6.88% Median home prices dropping 0.4% like a polite cough

High rates are slowly squeezing home prices down, so keep lowball offers coming.

RATE & BOND MARKET INTELLIGENCE 📈

🧱💣 The 4.78% Wall

Rates Hold Firm Near Highest Levels in Four Weeks Despite Big Jobs Beat

If you were expecting mortgage rates to plunge before autumn, I’ve got bad news: the bond market doesn’t care about your feelings.

Mortgage rates nudged higher this week following an unexpected surge in Nonfarm Payrolls (162k actual vs. 56k consensus). Usually, a massive jobs beat sends bond yields screaming into the stratosphere, leaving borrowers crying into their financial statements. But this time, yields only ticked up modestly. The 10-Year Treasury settled at 4.784% (+2 bps on the day, +6 bps over 5 days).

Why didn't bonds completely break down? Because corporate debt supply was unusually light and traders had already priced in sticky economic data. But make no mistake: 4.78% on the 10-Year is a wall.

+----------------------+-----------+------------+------------+
| Asset / Benchmark    | Level     | 5-Day Chg  | Trend      |
+----------------------+-----------+------------+------------+
| 10-Yr Treasury (TNX) | 4.784%    | +6 bps     | 🔼 Bearish |
| 30-Yr Treasury (TYX) | 5.246%    | +4 bps     | 🔼 Bearish |
| Mortgage Bonds (MBB) | $92.72    | -0.49%     | 🔻 Bearish |
| WTI Crude Oil (CL)   | $91.48    | +6.67%     | 🔼 Bullish |
+----------------------+-----------+------------+------------+

With WTI Crude ripping past $91/barrel (+6.67% this week), inflation expectations are getting cooked from the energy side. That keeps the Fed trapped. Borrowers know it: Adjustable-Rate Mortgage (ARM) applications just spiked to a 5-week high as buyers hunt for any entry yield below 6.5%.

Borrower: Give me a 30-year fixed rate.
Lender: That’ll be 6.9%.
Borrower: What about an ARM?
Lender: Welcome to the danger zone, my friend.
When ARM volume spikes, it’s not because buyers love risk—it’s because 7% fixed debt breaks cash flow.

What smart money does with this:

1. Pencil 5/1 and 7/1 ARMs on short-horizon value-add plays. If your hold period is 36 months before a cash-out refinance or sale, paying a 100 bps premium for 30-year fixed peace of mind is taking money out of your own pocket.
2. Demand 2-1 Seller Buydowns on every single offer. Don't ask for price cuts that lower the seller's ego—ask for a 3% seller concession to buydown your interest rate to 4.88% in Year 1.

Jobs beat consensus by over 100k 10-Year Treasury yield holding the line at 4.784%

The bond market doesn't care about rate-cut dreams when jobs numbers pop.

CHART OF THE WEEK 📉

📉🔨 Calendar Glitch Leverage

The YoY Pending Sales "Glitch": How Labor Day Skews the Data

Sep 2025 (Labor Day Week): [████████████████████] 100% baseline
Sep 2026 (Non-Holiday):   [██████████████] 72% (-28% YoY print)
Sep 2026 (Adjusted Real): [███████████████████] 96% (-4% Real)

Source: HousingWire analysis — as of September 2026.

Why it matters: HousingWire highlighted that early September 2026 year-over-year pending comps look like an absolute bloodbath because Labor Day fell on a different week in 2025. Uninformed retail buyers think the sky is falling, while Zillow-brain sellers think their home is a precious antique. Use the fake YoY drop as leverage in counter-offers today.

Media reporting a -28% pending sales bloodbath Me offering -20% under ask using their own fake news

Turn calendar glitches into aggressive counter-offers before sellers do math.

CORE DEAL TEARDOWN 🔨

Exploiting the YoY Comp Glitch: How to Get a $35,000 Price Adjustment on a Delusional Listing

What's going on here? On September 5th, HousingWire published a critical warning for housing market analysts: year-over-year comps for the rest of 2026 are completely warped by holiday timing.

Last year, Labor Day weekend shut down contract signings during a specific calendar week. This year, the holiday shifted. If you look at raw MLS and national real estate databases today, pending sales look like they took a 20%+ dive compared to the exact same week in 2025.

Uneducated sellers look at last month's comps and think they can hold out for spring 2025 prices. Listing agents—who barely understand basic statistics—are telling their clients that inventory is tight and buyers will come back after labor day. They're wrong. Active inventory is stacking up, days on market are stretching, and the "pending crash" headline is scaring off amateur retail buyers.

+--------------------------------+-----------------+-----------------+
| Underwriting Line Item         | Seller Fantasy  | Investor Reality|
+--------------------------------+-----------------+-----------------+
| Asking / Agreed Purchase Price | $385,000        | $348,000        |
| Year-Over-Year Comp Basis      | Sept 2025 Peak  | Sept 2026 Adjusted|
| 30-Year Debt Service (6.88%)   | $2,525/mo       | $2,282/mo       |
| Seller Concession (2-1 Buydown)| $0              | $11,500         |
| Net Effective Entry Price      | $385,000        | $336,500        |
+--------------------------------+-----------------+-----------------+

What this actually means: When a listing agent pulls "comparable sold properties" from 6 to 12 months ago to justify an inflated price tag, they are comparing apples to high-interest hand grenades.

In September 2025, buyers were absorbing lower inventory with slightly different rate expectations. Today, inventory is up, WTI crude oil is at $91+, and mortgage rates are grinding near 6.9%. But because sellers see "low YoY pending contract numbers," they assume the market is just taking a temporary holiday nap.

Here is the exact arbitrage: You submit cash/hard-money offers anchored to current 30-day active comps, forcing the listing agent to confront the real Days on Market (DOM) trajectory.

🎬 REACTION BREAK Animated clip of someone flipping over a table in a boardroom.

Zooming in: The deal breaker line item on every small-to-mid acquisition this month is Insurance + Property Tax Reset.

In markets across the Sunbelt and Midwest, retail sellers are pricing properties based on their legacy 2021 tax assessments and old insurance binders ($1,200/yr). When you buy that property at $350k+, your county tax assessor resets the valuation on Jan 1st, and your insurance carrier quotes $2,800/yr.

If you underwrite using the seller's historical tax bill, your $300/month cash flow flips into a -$150/month bleed the moment the escrow account re-balances.

Zooming out: Institutional buyers (SFR aggregators and Wall Street funds) are sitting on their hands until Q4 tax-loss selling starts. They aren't bidding up suburban 3-bed, 2-bath inventory right now. That leaves a clear 60-day window for local operators to swoop in, submit aggressive lowball offers with short inspection contingencies, and demand heavy seller concessions.

Cory's Take: "Never argue with a seller about what their house is worth. Show them the active listings sitting on market for 45+ days, show them the rate environment, and hand them a contract that solves their problem today at your price. Let their delusion be your discount."

For members: Download our complete 2026 Calendar-Adjusted Comp Sheet and Seller Negotiation Script inside Real Estate Servant.

Sponsored

If you're still making offers on properties using napkin math and gut feelings, stop. You're either leaving $20,000 on the table or making offers that get laughed off the MLS.

Retail Buyer Profits built a free calculator that does the heavy lifting for you. You drop in the property details, and it instantly calculates your Maximum Allowable Offer (MAO), projected net profit, and a side-by-side wholesale vs. flip comparison. No credit card, no 14-day trial trap—just instant underwriting math that keeps you from buying a bad deal.

EXPECTED OUTCOME: Know whether to make an offer or walk away in 60 seconds with an automated green, yellow, or red profit signal. THE DECISION THIS HELPS YOU MAKE: Decide whether to make an offer on a deal or walk away based on RBP versus wholesale profit targets. NOT FOR YOU IF: You prefer spending three hours manually guessing contractor bids on a deal that's $80k overpriced anyway.

Proof: ask them for a funded example — we requested one.

Run Your Next Deal Through the RBP Calculator

QUICK HITS: MARKET PULSE ⚡

• Mortgage Applications Rebound as ARM Share Hits 5-Week High: Mortgage Bankers Association data reveals buyers are ditching 30-year fixed loans to grab lower introductory rates on ARMs as purchase demand ticks up. So what: If you're flipping houses, your buyer pool is stretching their debt capacity to the limit—stage your properties meticulously and offer lender credit incentives to close before rates tick higher.

• Housing Year-Over-Year Comps Need Context for Rest of 2026: Labor Day timing differences between 2025 and 2026 skewed raw market data, making pending contract drops look worse than actual underlying buyer demand. So what: Use the scary headlines to spook motivated sellers into accepting 10-15% below ask, while keeping your own underwriting grounded in real local absorption rates.

• Apartment Rent Growth Strengthens as US Supply Cools: The historic tsunami of new apartment construction deliveries has finally peaked, causing multifamily rent declines to reverse and stabilize across major metros. So what: The window to buy mispriced small-multifamily (5-20 units) from over-leveraged regional syndicators is at its absolute peak right now before rent growth kicks back into gear in 2027.

Retail Investor: I'm waiting for 3% interest rates to come back.
Market: [stares in 4.78% 10-Year yield]
Waiting for 2021 rates is like waiting for gas to cost $0.99 again. Adapt your debt structure or get left behind.

CORY'S DIGEST 📰

• MarketWatch Twin brothers left houses by parents clash over property taxes and upkeep — Never co-own inherited real estate without an LLC operating agreement unless you enjoy family lawsuits.
• MarketWatch Couples in their 70s taking on massive mortgages to move near grandkids — Taking on a jumbo mortgage at age 74 in high-tax California is a masterclass in financial self-sabotage.
• CNBC Treasury yields face critical 4.8% test as fiscal risks spill into broad markets — If the 10-Year yield breaks above 4.85%, prepare for hard-money rates to re-prime above 11%.

THE AI EDGE 🤖

Comparing the Big AI Models for Real Estate Deal Sourcing & Underwriting

Stop using AI just to write generic property descriptions for your MLS listings. That’s amateur hour. Sharp operators are using LLMs to parse local zoning codes, analyze seller motivation, and extract hidden line items from seller-provided profit & loss statements.

Here is how the top models stack up for real estate workflows in September 2026:

+-------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| AI Model / Tool   | Best Real Estate Use Case         | Weakness / Risk                   |
+-------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Parsing complex T12 P&Ls & Leases | Struggles with real-time web search|
| ChatGPT Plus (o1) | Logic checks & structuring seller | Hallucinates local tax millage   |
| Perplexity Pro    | Sourcing local planning board mins| Can miss off-market historicals   |
+-------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+

Wholesaler: I used AI to analyze this deal!
Investor: Why did it include a 0% vacancy rate?
Wholesaler: The prompt told it to be optimistic.
Garbage prompts in equal bankrupt acquisitions out. Always audit the model's math.

Strategic Caution: Never upload unredacted tenant personal information, social security numbers, or sensitive bank account details into public AI model prompts. Data privacy violations carry real legal liabilities that will wipe out your profit margin faster than a bad roof.

PROMPT OF THE WEEK 🧠

The Listing Agent "Fluff Destroyer" Underwriting Prompt

Copy and paste this exact prompt into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini when analyzing an active MLS listing or wholesaler deal blast.

Act as a ruthless real estate acquisitions analyst with 20 years of experience in distressed single-family and small multifamily properties. 

Analyze the following property description, asking price, and financial claims for [INSERT ADDRESS OR PASTE TEXT HERE].

Perform the following tasks:
1. Identify every instance of agent "fluff" or vague terminology (e.g., "value-add potential," "handyman special," "up-and-coming neighborhood") and translate it into estimated repair costs or neighborhood risks.
2. Re-underwrite the property assuming a 6.88% debt interest rate, an 8% vacancy factor, 10% property management fee, and a 15% increase in property taxes post-closing.
3. Calculate the Maximum Allowable Offer (MAO) assuming an asking price of [INSERT ASKING PRICE] and realistic market rent of [INSERT RENT ESTIMATE].
4. Output a bulleted list of the top 3 deal-killing risks I must verify during my physical walkthrough.

Provide your output in a clean, concise markdown table followed by your final Verdict: BUY, NEGOTIATE, or WALK AWAY.

What to do with the output: Take the generated MAO and risk table, print it to PDF, and attach it directly to your lowball purchase agreement as "Exhibit A: Underwriting Justification." It removes emotion from the negotiation and proves to the seller why their price is out of reality.

CLASSIFIEDS & TOOLKIT 🧰

• 📅 Sunsama: Stop letting scattered deal tasks, contractor calls, and emails ruin your workday. Claim a 30-day credit to consolidate your tasks and calendar into one clean, timeboxed daily schedule.
• 📧 SaneBox: Eliminate inbox chaos and save 3-4 hours every week by automatically sorting unimportant marketing emails and tracking follow-ups with sellers. Try it free for 2 weeks with no credit card.
• 🐝 Real Estate Bees: Access free property marketplaces, lead platforms, DispoBlast tools, and pro directories to scale your deal sourcing without paying monthly software subscriptions.

PARTNER PICKS 🤝

Automate inbound lead calls with AI

FreedomSoft Voice Agent answers and qualifies seller leads around the clock so you only focus on viable deals. Ideal for investors looking to capture every lead without adding payroll.

See FreedomSoft Voice Agent

YOUR MONEY MOVES THIS WEEK 💸

1. Audit your local comps for holiday timing distortions. Check every pending contract in your target zip codes from early September 2025 vs 2026 before submitting your next offer—don't let an agent use unadjusted YoY numbers against you.
2. Structure a 2-1 buydown on your open pipeline deals. With the 10-Year yield sitting at 4.784%, getting the seller to pay $8,000-$12,000 in closing credits saves you hundreds per month compared to a standard price reduction.
3. Run your active pipeline through the Prompt of the Week. Paste your top 3 target property listings into Claude or ChatGPT today to extract hidden tax and repair risks before you wire earnest money.

Reply and tell me which one you ran — I read every reply.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK 💬

You don't make money when you sell real estate. You make money when you buy—by having the patience to wait for the market's math to force the seller's hand. — Cory Boatright, REIPROFITS

ON OUR RADAR 📡

1. Google Gemini Trail Rescues: Search-and-rescue teams had to save hikers who used AI to plan trip rations. Reminder: Never trust an AI model to estimate your rehab budget or water supplies without human verification.
2. GameStop Cash Hoard: The company is sitting on a $1.4B cash pile while retail traders debate its next move. Corporate treasury management is looking weirder by the day.
3. Thrifty Travel Hacks: Budget travelers are booking "mystery vacations" and hostels as hotel prices hit records. Consumer belt-tightening is officially spreading to discretionary leisure.

ONE MORE THING 🤹

A bullet manufacturer operating for 39 years just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week. When a company selling actual ammunition can’t make the debt math work in today’s credit market, it tells you everything you need to know about over-leveraged capital structures.

🎬 REACTION BREAK Animated loop of an old-school cash register opening and snapping shut empty.

If your real estate deals require 0.5% interest rate drops to break even, you're not an investor—you're a gambler holding an empty magazine.

RATE THIS ISSUE ⭐

Did this issue help you make or protect money?

🤩 Made me money · 😐 Interesting · 😒 Missed the mark
(Reply to this email with your feedback!)

SPREAD THE PROFITS 📣

If this issue saved you from making an overpriced offer on a property or helped you underwrite debt better than your lender, do me a quick favor: forward this email to one active real estate investor in your network.

We don't run millions in junk ad campaigns. We grow because operators tell other operators where the real intelligence lives. Forward it now on September 7, 2026.

BACKEND ENGINE: WORK WITH CORY ⚙️

• Apply for 1-on-1 Consulting & Advisory
  https://coryboatright.com
  Proof: Work directly with an operator who owns SFR and multifamily today.

• Run Your Next Deal Through the RBP Calculator
  https://reiprofits.com
  Proof: Free — know your max offer before you call the seller.

Published by Cory Boatright & Real Estate Servant Media.