October 5, 2026

Reports and articles referenced:

Featured Report

What’s Ahead

Recent Realtor.com Economics Reports:

  • Wednesday, October 7: Small Mortgages & 21st Century
  • Thursday, October 8: Weekly Data
  • Friday, October 9: September Hottest Markets

Recent Indicators

Housing data for download:

Video Script:

  • Introduction:

    • Last week mortgage rates climbed in their largest one-week move in 4 years. How should you react as a buyer or seller, and what are we seeing in the market so far? I’ll spell it out and give you some tools to cope, plus I’ll take a step back to examine a much-discussed demographic trend and share the Realtor.com Economics perspective on how it will unfold.
    • I’m Danielle Hale, Chief Economist at Realtor.com, and this is The Weekly Housing Outlook your guide to the best research and insights on the economy and housing market and what they mean for renters, buyers, sellers, and industry pros.

Featured Report

    • Today’s featured report takes a step back from the week to week market noise, don’t worry, we’ll cover that later. Senior Economist Jiayi Xu took a look at demographic trends for the oldest Americans–the Silent Generation and Baby Boomers–to figure out how they are going to impact the housing market in the years ahead in our first-ever Generational Housing Succession report. Let’s see what she found. 
    • Thanks Jiayi. So the impact of the Boomers aging out of housing is starting, but the peak effects are still several years away. Furthermore, the impact will be smaller or larger depending on where you are and the size of homes that you’re looking for, with the biggest impact in the largest-size homes.

  • The Week Ahead:

    • Now let’s turn to the week ahead, and the Realtor.com Economics team reports and market indicators to watch out for this week.
    • In addition to the Generational Housing Succession report, out today, Senior Economist Hannah Jones will publish the September Hottest Housing markets report on Tuesday to find which areas of the U.S. still have fast-selling, in-demand homes. 
    • On Wednesday, Senior Economist Joel Berner will publish a look at Small Mortgages in the next installment of his series on how the 21st Century Road to Housing Act is likely to make a difference in the housing market.
    • On Thursday, Senior Economist Hannah Jones is back to share the latest housing market trends in our weekly data.
    • From an indicator perspective, the only housing-related data point is Freddie Mac mortgage rates that will update on Thursday. Mortgage rates have been on a wild ride, climbing 62 basis points in just the last 5 weeks, mirroring a similar reset in the Treasury market.
    • While late last week saw some modest easing in 10-year yields, they remain well-above week-ago levels, suggesting that mortgage rates are also likely to remain well-above 7% this week. This creates tough trade-offs for buyers who would normally benefit from near-peak seasonal conditions this week that follows the Best Time to Buy nationwide.
    • Home shoppers who don’t need to finance their purchase can still take advantage of these conditions but the majority of home shoppers who do need to take on a mortgage will want to watch their budget carefully. The reset in rates over the last 5 weeks has shaved a little more than 6% off of the purchasing power of buyers across every budget, which is almost twice the typical price-savings advantage of buying in this less competitive season.
    • Despite mortgage rate challenges for many buyers, it’s worth tracking the ‘best week’ to buy a home. Last week featured peak conditions nationwide and in 14 large metro areas.  This week, an additional 6 metro areas, including Salt Lake City, Utah and Columbus, Ohio, see top buying conditions while next week seasonal trends are best in 5 markets spread from coast to coast including the San Francisco metro and my hometown market, Washington, DC and surrounds.

The Weekly Review:

    • Now let’s look back at the major updates and research that were released last week.
    • The biggest expected market-moving update of the week came on Friday from the employment situation summary or jobs report. We learned that hiring was weaker than many economists expected in September and also saw downward revisions to July and August data. Fortunately, the unemployment rate itself was little changed, rising from 4.1% to 4.2% and jobless claims remain low. Earnings growth of 3% is still relatively high even though it isn’t beating recent inflation.
    • The other big macro indicator of note was mortgage rates, which surged to 7.28%, marking their biggest weekly increase in 4 years. With a 62 basis point climb in the last 5 weeks, mortgage rates are now at their highest level in nearly three years. This is just the latest installment in mortgage rate increases that have now provided a $19,000 shock to the homebuying budget of someone on a fixed, $2,000 budget. This amounts to a little more than 6% of purchasing power for buyers on any fixed budget. 
    • In September housing data released last week, the impact was evident: pending sales were 4.1% lower than this time last year, and more than 1 in 5 listings saw a price cut, the highest since October 2022. Active listings increased despite fewer new listings coming to market, a sign that even as buyers gain negotiating leverage, fewer are taking advantage. Weekly data show that new listings were modestly higher in the last week of September than across the month as a whole, but otherwise, trends were very consistent. 
    • Although listing prices have been softening throughout the year, sale prices have still climbed, and the Case-Shiller home price index released last Tuesday showed that trend not only continued in July, the pace of home price growth picked up. Case-Shiller’s methodology is very backward looking, and I expect that the August data will reverse that pickup, just as we saw in NAR’s existing-home sales data.
    • Finally, with mortgage rate moves themselves out of your control, we’re bringing you research to help you hone in on the things you can control. Recently, Senior Economist Joel Berner reviewed historic mortgage rate volatility, to help home shoppers figure out how to anticipate what could be ahead. Last week, Senior Economist Jake Krimmel looked at how individuals can maximize their chances of getting a lower rate, regardless of what the trends in the headlines are. In his report, Jake found that the difference between a rate that is among the 10% worse compared to a rate among the 10% best is 93 basis points–big enough to swing the amount of home you can afford on a $2,000 budget by more than $28,0000. 
    • Boosting your credit score pays off, and Jake hones in on the categories that offer the biggest boost: bumping from just below to above 700 or above 720 is a 5.5 basis point swing.
    • Larger down payments also generally help lower your mortgage rate, but the declines aren’t uniform, and sometimes a lower down payment has better rates. If you aren’t going to put down more than 20%, explore multiple options with your lender to find the best rate.
    • My favorite finding from this report is that the lender you pick matters quite a bit. Going from a typical lender to one of the lowest-rate lenders drops your rate 19 basis points and going from the highest rate to the lowest rate was associated with more than a 28 basis point swing.
    • So perhaps the most important takeaway is that shopping around for a lender–something that can be done in a few days–can net you some of the biggest savings.

Questions from the Mailbag:

From Reddit

    • From Realtor.com Economics “I’m trying to get into housing data. Why do Case-Shiller, NAR, and Realtor.com show different home price numbers, and which one should I be tracking?”

  • Closing:

    • That’s it for this Weekly Housing Outlook! How have rising mortgage rates changed your homebuying or selling plans? Let me know in the comments below, or on your preferred social channel! You can find all of our research and housing data at Realtor.com/Research, with direct links in the description. Subscribe on YouTube so you never miss a Monday briefing. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you next week! 

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