About our market reference: what it shows, and where it comes from

Every page of this site carries a small market reference: four public figures, each shown with its source and the date it describes. This note explains what they are, why they are there, and the rules we apply to them. It makes no market forecast.

The four figures

• 10-Year Treasury. The 10-year constant-maturity par yield published by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in its Daily Treasury Par Yield Curve Rates. It is published each business day.
• 10Y–2Y spread. The 10-year yield less the 2-year yield, computed by us from the same Treasury release. We show it in basis points.
• SOFR. The Secured Overnight Financing Rate, published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for each business day.
• CPI-U, year over year. The change over twelve months in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (U.S. city average, all items, not seasonally adjusted), computed from the index published monthly by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Why these figures

Real estate underwriting is anchored to the cost of money and the path of prices. Fixed-rate commercial mortgages are commonly priced as a spread over a Treasury yield of similar term; floating-rate loans commonly reference SOFR; and leases, operating expenses and construction budgets are all exposed to inflation. When we build a pro forma framework, these are the reference points that debt-service, exit and expense assumptions are tested against.

They are references, not assumptions. A model's interest rate, cap rate or growth rate is a judgment about a specific asset, structure and hold period, and it is made and documented in the engagement.

The rules we follow

• Primary sources only. Each figure comes directly from the agency that publishes it, without a paid key.
• Always dated. Each figure shows the date or month it describes. These series are published daily or monthly; we do not describe them as real time.
• Hidden, not stale. If a source cannot be reached, its figure is hidden rather than shown without a date.
• No forecasts. The strip shows published values and the change from the prior publication. It does not project anything.

The metro context in the Mandate Finder follows the same discipline: population estimates and American Community Survey figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, and unemployment rates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, each labelled with its vintage.