Mortgage rates are close to a yearly high, and Federal Reserve members have been sounding hawkish over the past two months, which has finally pushed rates above a key level for my demand model: 6.64%.

The question is: can housing demand still grow if rates stay above that level for a longer period? Over the years, I have noticed in our data that housing tends to perform better when mortgage rates fall below 6.64% and approach 6%. Now, with mortgage rates slightly above this level, can housing demand still grow?

Today’s purchase application data was the first double-negative print in a while, indicating negative week-to-week and year-over-year growth. Now, this particular calendar week often shows a week-to-week decline, so a 7% decline week to week wasn’t surprising, but this was only the third negative year-over-year print of the year, at 2%.

The comps for purchase apps and existing home sales will also get a bit harder now, as the housing market shifted mid-June 2025 and demand started to pick up toward the end of 2025.

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

Weekly pending home sales data mostly positive

Oddly enough, the biggest growth killer this year was actually the snowstorm in January. For the most part, after making holiday and snowstorm adjustments, housing data has been positive in our weekly and total pending home sales data this year.

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

  • 2026: 63,971
  • 2025: 61,143

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

  • 2026: 403, 406
  • 2025: 387,590

As you can see, we are showing growth this year. My 2026 forecast was very simple: we can get 237,000 more existing home sales if mortgage rates can stay below 6.25%. That obviously didn’t happen, but for the most part, housing data held up because most of the year rates were below 6.64%.

Conclusion

We will keep an eye out on housing demand as mortgage rates are currently above 6.64% — but not by much, and like always, meaningful demand moves off duration, both positive and negative. This is why we created the weekly Housing Market Tracker articles, to give you a heads-up two to three months ahead of time on where demand is going. Purchase apps typically look out 30-90 days and our weekly pending home sales hit the sales data 30-60 days out as well.

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