Every Monday this newsletter shows up with rates, charts, and analysis. This Monday was different. Yesterday I stood at attention for the names I still carry — friends who never came home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Today I sit down to write about mortgages. The two things connect more than people think.
The homes we finance, the equity we build, the wealth that gets passed down — none of it exists without the people who paid for it in blood. That includes the millions of veterans alive today who came home and used a benefit their predecessors died to create. The VA loan turns 82 this year. It has put more than 28 million veterans into homes since 1944. That is the through-line of this issue.
The Full Rate Stack — May 22, 2026
30-Year Fixed Rate — Last 4 Weeks
Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey · April 30 – May 21, 2026
The Fed paused at 3.75%. The 2-yr is at 4.13%. The 10-yr ticked up to 4.56%. Your mortgage moved to 6.51% — and 15 of those basis points came on this week alone after the Fed Chair handoff. Watch the bond market, not the headlines.
Source: Freddie Mac PMMS, May 21, 2026 · Federal Reserve H.15 Selected Interest Rates, May 22, 2026 · U.S. Department of the Treasury Daily Yield Curve, May 22, 2026.
New Fed Chair. New Tone. Bond Market Reacted Immediately.
On Friday May 22, Kevin Warsh was sworn in as the 17th Chair of the Federal Reserve, replacing Jerome Powell after Powell's second four-year term as Chair ended on May 15. The Senate confirmed Warsh 54–45 the prior week. Powell remains on the Board as a Governor; his term as a Governor runs to January 2028.
In the days before and after the swearing-in, the 10-year Treasury yield climbed roughly 8 basis points and the 30-year fixed mortgage jumped 15 basis points week-over-week.
Markets pre-priced what they think Warsh will do — likely push for rate cuts faster than Powell would have. In theory that's good for mortgages. But the bond market doesn't love uncertainty about Fed independence, and that fear sent the 10-year UP, not down. The mortgage you're quoted today is 0.15% higher than the one you would have been quoted last Wednesday. Same house, same income, ~$30 more per month on a $400K loan. That is what a Fed transition looks like in real money.
"Our mandate at the Fed is to promote price stability and maximum employment."
— Kevin Warsh · Oath of Office · East Room of the White House · May 22, 2026
Source: Federal Reserve Board press release, May 15, 2026 · CBS News, May 22, 2026 · Al Jazeera, May 22, 2026.
Sales Edged Up. Prices Hit a New April Record.
+0.2% from March. Sales unchanged year-over-year. Market is steady, not surging.
+0.9% YoY — 34th straight month of YoY price increases. Single-family median: $422,300.
Up from 4.3 in March, up from 4.3 one year ago. Still below the 5–6 month "balanced" threshold.
Up from 101.4 a year ago. Wage growth is finally outpacing home price growth — modestly.
Prices are still going up, but slowly. Inventory is creeping higher, which gives buyers a little more leverage than this time last year. Affordability is improving — not because homes got cheaper, but because wages caught up a hair. Translation: if you've been waiting for a crash, it isn't coming. The window is the gap between now and the next Fed move.
Source: National Association of REALTORS® Existing-Home Sales Report, May 11, 2026.
The VA Loan at 82 — and One Move Every Buyer Should Make This Week.
VA Loan: The Benefit Paid For by the People We Bury Today
Created in 1944 as part of the original G.I. Bill. Zero down. No PMI. Competitive rates. Just a funding fee — and roughly 1 in 3 eligible veterans qualifies for a complete fee exemption.
2026 baseline limit: $832,750 (up from $806,500 in 2025). High-cost areas: up to $1,299,500. Full entitlement = no cap.
FY2025 volume: 528,000+ loans guaranteed — up sharply from 416,376 in FY2024. The program is in a renaissance.
If you served and you haven't used your benefit — call. Twenty minutes. I'll tell you what your entitlement actually buys, and whether VA or conventional makes more sense for your situation. Some clients do better with conventional even when they qualify for VA. I'll tell you that too if it's true.
Pull Both FICO and Vantage — Before June 30.
Through June 30, you can pull a free credit report from all three bureaus weekly. Pull both your FICO score and your Vantage score on the same day. Lenders increasingly accept the better of the two.
Real cases I've seen this year:
573 FICO → 652 Vantage. No loan became a loan.
695 FICO → 728 Vantage. Major pricing improvement, saving the borrower ~$80/mo for 30 years.
If you've been told "your credit isn't there yet" — pull both before the window closes June 30. Send me a screenshot and I'll tell you in five minutes whether it changes your numbers.
Source: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Annual Benefits Report FY2024 · VA Home Loans Lender Statistics · Federal Housing Finance Agency 2026 Conforming Loan Limit announcement.
Three Stories Moving the Market — and One You Won't Read Anywhere Else.
30-Year Fixed Jumps 15 BPS in a Single Week
Freddie Mac PMMS climbed to 6.51% from 6.36% the week prior. Biggest one-week move since February. Spread over 10-year Treasury widened to 1.95%.
Source: Freddie Mac PMMS, May 21, 2026Warsh Sworn In. Powell Stays on Board.
Kevin Warsh is the 17th Fed Chair. Powell remains as a Governor through January 2028. Markets pre-positioned: bond yields up before the swearing-in, mortgages followed.
Source: CBS News, May 22, 2026Affordability Index Hits 110.6 — Best Reading in a Year
NAR's index is up from 101.4 a year ago. Wage growth (modestly) outpaced home-price growth across all four regions. First sustained improvement since 2021.
Source: NAR Existing-Home Sales Report, May 11, 2026Where This Holiday Comes From — and Why It Started at Arlington.
Memorial Day did not start with a parade. It started with a 1868 order issued by Major General John A. Logan, head of the Grand Army of the Republic — the largest organization of Union Civil War veterans. On May 5, 1868, Logan signed General Orders No. 11, designating May 30 as Decoration Day: a day for the nation to place flowers on the graves of soldiers who had died in the war.
The first national observance took place at Arlington National Cemetery on May 30, 1868. About 5,000 people attended — roughly the same size crowd that gathers there today. Then-Congressman James Garfield gave the address. After the speeches, attendees walked the grounds and decorated graves of roughly 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers buried side by side. Small American flags were placed at every gravesite. That tradition has never stopped.
"We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke; but we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death."
— James A. Garfield · First Memorial Day Address · Arlington National Cemetery · May 30, 1868
Arlington was Robert E. Lee's family estate. When the Civil War began, the Union army seized it. Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs — whose own son had been killed in the war — chose to bury Union dead in the front yard, specifically so the Lees could never return to live there. Within months, 20,000 graves surrounded the house. The cemetery was born out of grief, anger, and a refusal to forget. Today it holds more than 400,000 graves.
Source: U.S. National Park Service · U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration · American Battle Monuments Commission · National Constitution Center.
Four Things That Happened in This Week of American History.
■ The First Decoration Day at Arlington
On May 30, 1868, a crowd of 5,000 gathered at Arlington for the first national Memorial Day. General Ulysses S. Grant — then a candidate for president — sat in the front row. Children of soldiers, both Union and Confederate, walked the grounds together placing flowers. There is a lesson in that. Even after the bloodiest war in American history, the next generation found a way to stand in the same field. The thing they shared was grief.
■ The Unknown Soldier Came Home
Four unidentified American soldiers were exhumed from cemeteries in France. Army Sergeant Edward F. Younger, a wounded combat veteran, was given a single white rose. He walked the row of caskets and placed the rose on one. That one was buried at Arlington on November 11, 1921 — the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Since 1937, a sentinel from the 3rd Infantry Regiment ("The Old Guard") has stood watch over that tomb 24 hours a day, every day, in every kind of weather. The watch has never stopped — not once in 89 years.
■ Flags-In Begins — and Has Not Missed a Year
When the Old Guard was designated the Army's official ceremonial unit in 1948, they began an annual tradition. On the Thursday before Memorial Day, every available soldier in the regiment enters Arlington with a backpack of small flags. Each soldier walks to a headstone, takes one step back, and places a flag exactly one boot length in front of the marker. They then move to the next. More than 1,000 soldiers place over 280,000 flags in a few hours. It is the most quietly extraordinary act of disciplined gratitude in the United States military.
■ Samuel Morse Sent the First Telegraph. The Message Was an In-Joke.
On May 24, 1844, Samuel Morse transmitted the first electrical telegraph message from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore. It read: "What hath God wrought." Mic drop. But the truly funny part — the line was suggested by Annie Ellsworth, the 16-year-old daughter of the U.S. Patent Commissioner. Morse, at the time, was an unemployed portrait painter who had been begging Congress for funding for over a decade. The most famous quote in the history of communication was picked by a teenager. There's a lesson in that too. The breakthrough is usually obvious to whoever is closest to it.
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Book My 20-Minute CallI went to the cemetery yesterday. I won't tell you who I went for. They were 22 and 26 and 31. Two of them were married. One had a kid he never met. The youngest one had been talking about getting out and going to community college on the GI Bill. They all believed they were doing something that mattered. They were right.
I came home and I used my VA loan. I bought a house. I built equity. I started a career that lets me put other veterans — and their families, and their neighbors — into homes of their own. That feels like the right way to spend the time my friends did not get.
If you served, please use the benefit. If you know a veteran who hasn't, send them this. And if you didn't serve — the best thing you can do today is the most ordinary thing: live the kind of life they died to make possible.
I do it anyways.
— Paul Messina · Loan Officer · Milestone Mortgage Solutions · NMLS #2679956 · U.S. Army Combat Veteran
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