# Weekly mortgage and housing market update draft in Gmail > Every Monday at 7am ET, get a client-ready weekly mortgage rate and housing market recap sitting in your Gmail drafts, ready to review and send. - Workflow type: agent - Services: FRED (St. Louis Fed), Perplexity AI, Gmail - Categories: Marketing, Finance - Published: 2026-07-02 ## What it does - Pulls the freshest 30-year and 15-year fixed mortgage rates along with median home sale price, existing home sales, and new housing starts, then calculates week-over-week and year-over-year moves. - Grabs this week's mortgage news, Fed commentary, and any housing policy moves so your note explains why rates moved rather than just listing numbers. - Writes a short branded intro, a scannable metrics table, a two-paragraph plain-English take for buyers and sellers, and a friendly sign-off. - Drops the finished note in your Gmail drafts every Monday morning so you can eyeball it, tweak the voice, and hit send when you are ready. ## What you'll need - A Gmail account you send client updates from. - A FRED account for the free public mortgage and housing data. - A Perplexity AI account for the weekly news and context. - Your newsletter distribution list or a group alias for client subscribers. ## Prompt Build me an agent workflow that puts together a client-ready weekly mortgage and housing market update every Monday at 7am America/New_York and lands it as an unsent draft in my Gmail. I run a mortgage broker and realtor team, and we send this recap to our client mailing list every week. Trigger: cron, every Monday at 7:00am America/New_York. Step 1. Pull this week's numbers from FRED using Get Series Observations for these series, requesting the last roughly 60 weekly observations and the last 24 months of monthly observations so we can compute both week-over-week and year-over-year deltas: - MORTGAGE30US: Freddie Mac 30-year fixed rate, weekly. - MORTGAGE15US: Freddie Mac 15-year fixed rate, weekly. - MSPUS: median sales price of houses sold in the US, quarterly. - EXHOSLUSM495S: existing home sales, monthly, seasonally adjusted annual rate. - HOUST: new privately-owned housing units started, monthly, seasonally adjusted annual rate. For each series, capture the latest value, the prior period value, the value from one year ago, and compute the week-over-week (or period-over-period) and year-over-year change in both absolute terms and percent. Freddie Mac publishes MORTGAGE30US and MORTGAGE15US on Thursdays, so Monday morning we should have fresh weekly numbers. Step 2. Use Perplexity AI Create Chat Completion with a Sonar model to pull this week's mortgage market news, Fed commentary, and any relevant housing policy moves. Ask it to summarize why rates moved the way they did, what the Fed or Treasury said this week, and any legislative or regulatory news affecting mortgages, housing supply, or home affordability. Include citations. This is what lets the note explain the why, not just list numbers. Step 3. Compose the email body. Structure: - A short branded intro (one or two sentences) greeting the client list and dating the recap. - A scannable HTML table with the five metrics as rows and columns for This week, Prior week or period, Week-over-week (or period-over-period) change, and Year-over-year change. Format rates as percentages to two decimals and dollar amounts with thousands separators. - A two-paragraph plain-English take on what it means for buyers and sellers this week, weaving in the Perplexity context so the reader understands why rates moved. - A friendly sign-off with placeholder for my name, team, and licensing footer (NMLS number, brokerage name). Leave those as clearly labeled placeholders I can fill in on first run. Copy rules: warm, professional, non-technical. No em dashes anywhere. Use periods or commas instead. Do not include raw series IDs like MORTGAGE30US in the client-facing copy; use plain names like "30-year fixed rate" and "15-year fixed rate." Step 4. Use Gmail Create a Draft to save the message as an unsent draft. Address it to my newsletter distribution list (I will supply the email alias or group address on first run). Subject line pattern: "Weekly mortgage and housing update, {{date}}". Leave the draft unsent so I can eyeball it and hit send myself. Error handling: if a FRED series returns no fresh observation for this week (holiday, delayed release), still generate the recap using the most recent available value and note in the take that fresh data is pending. If Perplexity fails, still create the draft with the numbers and skip the market context paragraph. ## How to customize - Swap the send day and time if your subscribers prefer, say, Friday afternoons instead of Monday mornings. - Add or remove metrics (jumbo rates, refinance share, regional price indexes) or change the sign-off, brand colors, and disclaimer. - Point the draft at a different Gmail account or a different distribution list, or switch to sending directly instead of saving as a draft. ## FAQ ### Does the workflow actually send the email to my clients? No. It always saves the recap as an unsent Gmail draft addressed to your distribution list so you can review the copy, adjust the take, and hit send yourself. If you want it to send automatically, that is a small tweak you can make later. ### Where do the mortgage rates come from? The 30-year and 15-year fixed rates are pulled from the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey via FRED, the free public data service run by the St. Louis Fed. Freddie Mac publishes new numbers on Thursdays, so Monday morning has fresh figures to work with. ### Will the note actually sound human, or will it read like a spreadsheet? The workflow blends the raw numbers with this week's Fed commentary, mortgage news, and housing policy moves, then writes a two-paragraph plain-English take on what it means for buyers and sellers. You can also edit the voice each week before sending. ### Can I add my brokerage branding, NMLS number, or a compliance disclaimer? Yes. You can pin your intro line, sign-off, licensing footer, and any required disclaimers so every weekly draft is already on-brand and compliant before you review it. ### What if I want to also send this to my team on Slack or post it to a blog? Easy to extend. The same recap can be dropped into a Slack channel, a Notion page, or a blog post as a second step. Ask for a variation when you start with this prompt. Use this prompt in General Input: https://www.generalinput.com/prompts/weekly-mortgage-and-housing-market-update-draft-in-gmail