Real estate buyers kept pending sales above last year, with 71,173 contracts last week versus 66,967 a year earlier. Improved mortgage spreads helped keep borrowing costs below the 6.75% 2026 peak forecast, giving homebuyers and sellers a market that still cleared a higher bar even with elevated rates.
71,173 pending sales versus 66,967 a year ago is a gain of about 6.3%, enough to show that demand is still moving through the pipeline. Since pending sales usually show up in sales data 30 to 60 days later, last week’s count gives a near-term read on whether the 2026 housing pace can stay ahead of last year’s level.
Beth Hammack and 2.01%
2.01% mortgage spreads last week were only slightly better than 2.03% the week before, but they remained far below the over-3% level reached in 2023. That gap matters in practical terms: a spread of 2.01% is 20 to 39 basis points (hundredths of a percent) tighter than the historical 1.60% to 1.80% range, but still wide enough to keep mortgage rates above the levels that usually spark stronger demand.
Beth Hammack, Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack, said "lower oil prices were bad for inflation" while oil prices were at $68 last week. Even with lower oil prices, mortgage rates and bond yields stayed firm instead of falling, and the 10-year yield closed the week at 4.49%, so the borrowing-cost relief came from spreads rather than from a broad drop in market rates.
6.64% And 6%
6.64% is the line the housing data keeps coming back to: demand has tended to perform better when mortgage rates fall below that level and move toward 6%. If rates sit below the 6.75% 2026 peak forecast, the market can still hold together; if they drift back above 6.64%, the cushion narrows fast for buyers who are already working with higher monthly payments.
Inventory was near healthier post-2020 levels, which gives sellers more to work with than the tightest periods of the past few years. For buyers and sellers, the next read will matter because the weekly Housing Market Tracker will be hit by holiday data in the next two weeks, and the pending-sales pipeline should flow into sales numbers over the next 30 to 60 days.
