Even with volatility in mortgage rates last week, the seasonal decline in inventory is in full force. Weekly housing demand has continued to stabilize over the last four weeks and the new listing data is not showing any stress in the housing market. We had a lot of crazy things happen last week — in fact I’m writing this article still stuck in Dallas because of the FAA’s nationwide ground stop — but housing data never sleeps, so let’s take a look.
Housing inventory
Housing inventory has picked up recently, after mortgage rates went above 6.64% and then shot up toward 7.60%. Inventory growth had been very tame this year, with some weeks negative year over year. As housing inventory returns to normal levels, it takes weaker demand to get stronger growth and rates moving toward 7.60% did that. Still, it’s more about sales taking longer to happen and demand being hit, because new listings data didn’t budge much recently. Now, we are in the full-blown seasonal decline as we get ready to prep for spring 2027.
Inventory growth is running at 7.11% over last year even with easier comps, as last year demand was running toward a 9-month high in December of 2025.
- Weekly inventory change (Nov. 6-Nov. 13): Inventory fell from 902,740 to 895,988
- Same week last year (Nov. 7-Nov. 14): Inventory fell from 842,257 to 836,487
New listings
New listings have been in their seasonal decline since June and nothing abnormal with this data line has happened in 2026; in fact, it’s been the best year of new listings since 2022. One concern I had about higher rates is that more people might simply not list their homes — as they did in the second half of 2022 due to higher rates. However, that hasn’t happened; we did see a more noticeable year-over-year decline this last week, but for the most part it’s been a healthy year.
In a normal environment, new listings range from 80,000 to 100,000 per week during peak periods. For context, during the housing bubble years, new listings ranged from 250,000 to 400,000 per week for several years.
Here is last week’s new listings data for the past two years:
- 2026: 53,162
- 2025: 56,569
Price-cut percentage
Typically, about one-third of homes see price reductions before they sell, reflecting the housing market’s dynamic nature. Overall, price-cut percentages this year have been lower than last year. This held true until rates moved above 6.64% and then above 7%. At that point demand fell and the year-over-year price-cut percentage rose 1%.
In my 2026 home-price forecast, I called for a national decline of -0.62% for the year. Home-price growth really isn’t going anywhere this year and my -0.62% forecast may be hard to achieve, since most home-price indices show growth between 1% and 2%.
However, with higher rates and a rising price-cut percentage, we will be closer to the forecast. Clearly, if rates hadn’t risen above 6.75%, pricing data wouldn’t have shown the recent slowdown.
The price-cut percentage for last week:
- 2026: 43.%
- 2025: 42%
10-year yield and mortgage rates
In the 2026 HousingWire forecast, I anticipated the following ranges:
- Mortgage rates between 5.75% and 6.75%
- The 10-year yield fluctuating between 3.80% and 4.60%
Last week wasn’t good for mortgage rates or the bond market: we had hawkish Fed statements and hot inflation data. We were getting closer to mortgage rates below 7% for the holidays, but they made a big reversal from 7.17% to 7.50%. In addition, President Trump talked about raising tariffs against Mexico and we still have no deal with Iran. Pretty much everything you needed for rates to go lower went the other way — something I talked about in this episode of the HousingWire Daily podcast with Editor in Chief Sarah Wheeler.
Mortgage spreads
Mortgage spreads have worsened recently, but they did improve last week. Traditionally, when mortgage rates escalate with the 10-year yield and then make a big reversal — like we just had from a 5.35% 10-year yield top that dropped down toward 4.82% — spreads do get worse to try to compress mortgage rate volatility. However, we had a big reversal higher, and spreads improved some as the 10-year yield rose toward 5.14%.
Historically, mortgage spreads have ranged from 1.60% to 1.80%. Last week, spreads fell to 2.13% from 2.27% a week earlier.
Let’s compare last week’s mortgage rates to where they would have been at the best spread levels this year and the worst levels of this cycle.
- If we had the best levels of spreads in 2026, mortgage rates would be 7.19% today, not 7.50%.
- If we had the worst mortgage spread levels of 2023, mortgage rates would be 8.48% today, not 7.17%.
Weekly pending sales
Our pending home sales data provides a week-to-week perspective, though holidays and short-term fluctuations can affect results. This weekly pending sales data typically takes 30-60 days to reflect in sales data.
The key for the last four weeks: housing demand has stabilized, as our weekly pending sales have shown. Now, higher rates most likely will impact this week’s data more than last week, but the last four weeks have shown if we can get rates back below 7% and just have them stick, we can work with this.
Housing demand typically grows when rates get below 6.64% and fades when rates are above 7%, especially if the move in rates is fast, like we saw recently. Still, it was encouraging to see stabilization in the data when rates were trying to get below 7% again. Of course, we are seeing big year-over-year declines in this data line as rates were heading toward 6% last year.
Here are the pending sales for last week over the last two years:
- 2026: 50,623
- 2025: 60,722
Purchase applications
Purchase application data, which looks out 30-90 days, has softened as mortgage rates rose above 6.64% and are now above 7%. We did have 8% week-to-week growth last week as rates tried to get below 7% the week before. I expect the next purchase application data to get hit as rates picked up. This data was very positive year over year when rates were under 6.64%, but not so much when it headed toward 7% and got to 7.60%.
Here are the stats on purchase apps so far in 2026:
- 17 positive week-to-week prints
- 24 negative week-to-week prints
- 5 flat week-to-week prints
- 10 weeks of double-digit year-over-year growth
- 25 weeks of positive year-over-year growth
- 16 negative year-over-year prints
The week ahead: Fed speeches, retail sales, housing data and Trump headlines!
It’s going to be an interesting week because we have a ton of Fed members speaking and they really left their mark last week! We’ll get some housing data: the builder survey won’t be great, nor will housing starts. Pending home sales might lag our stabilization by one month, but if we do see some stabilization, remember it’s working from record-low levels. We have retail sales as well, and some of the economy has been beating to the upside. Also, we have to be mindful of Trump headlines with the Iran conflict and the trade war.
