- Mortgage rates decreased for the second week, down three basis points last week according to the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey released on December 24th. This is nearly 70 basis points lower than the same period last year and is a welcome holiday gift for aspiring homebuyers.
- Mortgage applications decreased 5.0 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending December 19th. “Overall mortgage application volume fell last week, despite the slight decline in mortgage rates,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s SVP and Chief Economist. “MBA expects the trends of a softening job market, sticky inflation, elevated home inventories, and steady mortgage rates will persist into the new year. Added Fratantoni, “Purchase application volume last week was 16 percent higher than a year earlier. We are forecasting continued, modest growth in terms of home sales in 2026.”
- Existing-home sales increased by 0.5% in November, according to the National Association of REALTORS® Existing-Home Sales Report. “Existing-home sales increased for the third straight month due to lower mortgage rates this autumn,” said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. “However, inventory growth is beginning to stall. With distressed property sales at historic lows and housing wealth at an all-time high, homeowners are in no rush to list their properties during the winter months. Wage growth is outpacing home price gains, which improves housing affordability. Still, future affordability could be hampered if housing supply fails to keep pace with demand,” Yun added. “As has been the case throughout the year, single-family home sales outperformed condominium sales in November. The typical price of a condo sold was 13.5% lower than the typical price of a single-family home. However, the purchase price does not include the condominium association fees, which are rising and making these purchases more expensive.”
- The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell last week and remain at historically healthy levels despite some signs that the labor market is weakening. U.S. applications for jobless claims for the week ending December 20th fell by 10,000 to 214,000 from the previous week’s 224,000, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. That’s below the 232,000 new applications forecasted by analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet. Applications for unemployment are viewed as a proxy for layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market. The unemployment rate rose to 4.6% last month, the highest since 2021. Hiring has clearly lost momentum, hobbled by uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the lingering effect of the high interest rates the Fed engineered in 2022 and 2023 to rein in an outburst of pandemic-induced inflation. Since March, job creation has fallen to an average of 35,000 a month, compared to 71,000 in the year ended in March.
