The housing market has held its own this year — even with higher inflation, higher oil prices, higher mortgage rates, and crazy headlines about AI taking all the jobs. But mortgage rates are right at a key level now and with the Iran conflict entering its 2.0 stage, can housing hold up? 

Today’s tracker will give us a look at data that shows a slight slowdown from the previous trend, as mortgage rates stayed above 6.64% most of last week. Just remember that going out for the rest of the year, we will be working with harder year-over-year comps as the housing market shifted last year in mid-June.

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%

All year, mortgage rates and the 10-year yield have stuck within my forecast channel, even with the Iran conflict as a major new variable in the equation. However, the Federal Reserve doesn’t like it when oil prices are up, and yet doesn’t care to comment much when they’re down. 

The housing market in the past few years has not done well when mortgage rates get above 6.64%. If this renewed conflict continues to escalate, look for the Federal Reserve hawks — who were very vocal last week — to get louder about this event. Mortgage rates behaved well this week considering the conflict news and hawkish Fed statements, but still, we are near the peak of the forecast on both bond yields and mortgage rates, and this weekend so far has been filled with many negative headlines.

Mortgage spreads

One thing is for sure this year: our entire housing discussion would have been different if mortgage spreads didn’t improve this year. 2023 spreads would have had us near 8% rates right now, and 2024 and 2025 spreads would have us over 7% most of the year, so hug a mortgage spread folks.

In the past few years, housing would have already slowed down because housing demand doesn’t do well with rates over 7%. Then we would all have to wait for rates to get below 6.64% before sales started to improve.

Historically, mortgage spreads have ranged from 1.60% to 1.80%. Last week, spreads were at 1.97%, up from 1.95% the week before.

Let’s compare last week’s mortgage rates to where they would have been over the last three years, given the 10-year yield’s current level:

  • If we had the worst mortgage spread levels of 2023, mortgage rates would be 7.77% today, not 6.63%.
  • If we had the worst levels of 2024, mortgage rates would be 7.40% today. 
  • If we had the worst levels of 2025, mortgage rates would be 7.20% today.

Weekly pending sales

Our pending home sales data provides a week-to-week perspective, though results can be affected by holidays and short-term fluctuations. This weekly pending sales data typically takes 30-60 days to be reflected in the sales data. 

We had the traditional Fourth of July weekend hit to the data two weeks ago, and the traditional rebound last week. However, the demand was slightly negative year over year. Mortgage rates spent most of last week above 6.64%. Remember, the year-over-year comps will be more difficult now as the housing market shifted last year in mid-June. We need to keep an eye on this going out if rates stay here or go higher. 

Here are the pending sales for last week over the last two years:

  • 2026: 66,654
  • 2025: 66,680

Mortgage purchase application data

Purchase application data typically sees a week-to-week decline during this calendar week every year, so the negative 7% week-to-week wasn’t a surprise in the data, but it was also negative year over year — not by much at 2%, but still negative. The comps year over year will be more challenging as soon we will enter a time when rates were lower last year versus this year. This last week was only the third negative print of the year. 

Here are the stats on purchase apps so far in 2026:

  • 11 positive week-to-week prints
  • 14 negative week-to-week prints
  • 2 flat week-to-week prints
  • 10 weeks of double-digit year-over-year growth
  • 24 weeks of positive year-over-year growth
  • 3 negative year-over-year prints

Housing inventory

Housing inventory has slowed a lot since mid-June 2025; most of the weeks in the past two months have been negative year over year, only slightly though. Two weeks ago we had the traditional decline in inventory because of the Fourth of July, and we got the traditional rebound this week. Also with this data line, the year-over-year comps will get easier to show growth as the housing market shifted last year at this time as demand picked up.

  • Weekly inventory change:(July 10-July 17): Inventory rose from 844,011 to 859,359
  • Same week last year: (July 5-July 12): Inventory rose from 846,843 to 856,731

New listings

The seasonal decline in new listings has arrived. Traditionally, there would be 80,000-100,000 new listings during the seasonal peak weeks, but we’ve only cracked above 80,000 four times this year and never in back-to-back weeks. Still, new listing data for 2025 and 2026 are better than in 2023 and 2024. That has been a new positive for the housing market as most home sellers are buyers as well. 

Some context for those who believe that the new listings data resembles the housing bubble years: new listings during that time 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: 74,250
  • 2025:  73,270

Price-cut percentage

Typically, about one-third of homes undergo price reductions before they sell, reflecting the dynamic nature of the housing market. For the most part, price-cut percentages this year have been lower than last year. This is a by-product of inventory growth slowing down and, in some weeks, the data being negative year over year. 

In my 2026 home-price forecast, I had a negative 0.62% call for the year nationally. Home-price growth really isn’t going anywhere this year, but the percentage of price cuts has been lower year over year for most of 2026. My forecast of negative -0.62% might be hard to achieve, as most of the home price indexes are showing price growth between 1%-2%.

The price-cut percentage for last week:

  • 2026: 40.21%
  • 2025: 41%

The week ahead: Iran conflict, bond auctions and new home sales

We are back to watching the Iran conflict, as oil prices are back up and there doesn’t seem to be any plans as of now to get another version of the deal done. We have had a lot of news on the conflict since Friday so we will wait until Monday to see the results. One thing that’s different now is that the conflict is happening during market hours, not just on weekends. We will also have new home sales and bond auctions this week, but once again the conflict will take center stage. 

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