Can mortgage rates get under 7% for the holidays? 

Last week, inflation was super hot, Fed voting members spoke hawkishly and the economic data was solid, so it’s strange to talk about rates possibly dropping below 7% for the holidays. However, after last week’s crazy bond action, rates below 7% for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Year’s are back in play. If you need to catch up on what happened last week in the bond market, I covered it on this episode of the HousingWire Daily podcast. Four hings need to happen to get mortgage rates below 7%. 1. The Iran conflict ending and oil prices falling will be a big help; the last time we saw a noticeable move lower in the 10-year yield was when the first MOU deal was announced in June. However, once that fell apart in July, and especially after President Trump said there would be no deal until the midterms, all hell broke loose and yields exploded higher.2. Any softness on the AI build-out will help bonds rally; we saw just a glimpse of a giant bleeding last week with CoreWeave, and bonds rallied hard as a result even in a week where inflation was hot and the economic data was firm. If we see any more headlines that AI companies are having a hard time getting financed, or if cert...