Yesterday, existing home sales data beat estimates, with revisions that show a positive trend in home sales, and then today the purchase application data shows 7% week-to-week growth and 17% year-over-year growth!  This is happening with mortgage rates near yearly highs. What gives?

I wrote about existing home sales here and discussed the report on this episode of the HousingWire Daily podcast as so many people were confused about the data.

For purchase applications, let me give some context that explains the double-digit, year-over-year growth and how this impacts the rest of the year.

Purchase application data

Two weeks ago, we saw a holiday slowdown in our Housing Market Tracker data, followed by a rebound. You can see a similar trend in purchase application data with the holiday, both this year and last. We have weeks in the year where purchase applications will fall week to week and rebound the next week. However, this year we have shown consistent year-over-year growth every week but two weeks. Those two weeks had hard comps to work from.

Now, when we take the purchase application data and string it out over the long term, we are working from extremely low levels. However, the growth this year is legit, where last year, we were working from mid-1990 levels. I joke that in 2025, the bar was so low that the last time we saw these levels, No Doubt was the top new hot band and “Gangsta’s Paradise” was the No. 1 song in America.

Today, we are closer to 2014 levels, a two-decade jump in music that means One Direction and One Republic were topping the charts. To be clear, we are still working off a low bar. As you can see in the chart below, we aren’t even back to 2015 levels here in this index. The growth in purchase application data this year is a much more positive story than last year, but context is still key.

Now, looking at the data below, the year-to-date count includes the purchase application data I track for our readers. I always prefer to see at least 12-14 weeks of positive weekly growth alongside the year-over-year. In the past few years, our better sales prints have come with better weekly data than year-over-year. However, this index has been growing year over year, which is a positive.

  • 10 positive week-to-week prints
  • 10  negative week-to-week prints
  • 2 flat week-to-week prints
  • 10 weeks of double-digit year-over-year growth
  • 20 weeks of positive year-over-year growth
  • 2 negative year-over-year prints

Conclusion

With everything happening in 2026, just think of existing home sales showing a little bit of growth this year versus last. If mortgage rates had stayed under 6.25% for the year — a level we saw earlier this year — my target of 237,000 more home sales would have been met.

Even though mortgage rates have moved up 0.76% from the lows, they are still lower year over year for 2026. In fact, we had the lowest mortgage rate curve to start the year since 2022. This has benefited the housing market, and the only reason it happened this year is better mortgage spreads.

Going forward, keep an eye on mortgage rates and how they affect purchase application data and our weekly tracker. In the past, when mortgage rates got above 6.64% and headed above 7%, that’s where we see demand get hit.

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