Housing Market Spotlight: The housing market signal to watch as rates top 7%

Mortgage rates crossed 7% this week, adding another affordability challenge for a housing market already navigating uneven buyer demand. As Logan Mohtashami explains in his latest mortgage rate analysis, the question now is how buyers respond. It will take time for that response to show up in housing market data. And this week’s numbers won’t give us a clean answer. Labor Day fell on Sept. 7 this year versus Sept. 1 last year, which distorts a direct year-over-year comparison for the week ending Sept. 11. One of the first places to watch is the relationship between new listings and new pending sales. Are buyers keeping pace with the supply coming onto the market, or is new supply beginning to outrun demand? Last week’s Housing Market Spotlight showed why no single housing market metric tells the whole story. Comparing new listings, pending sales and active inventory can reveal shifts that aren’t obvious from any one number alone. This week, the question is even more specific: Which of those signals could give us the earliest indication that buyer behavior is changing? Nationally, the balance has shifted only slightly Across the six weeks from July 17 through Aug. 21, there were abo...