Housing demand shockingly positive even as the Iran war continues

To my shock, housing demand grew noticeably last week, even though the war with Iran continues and mortgage rates are higher today than before the war started. Last week was one of the more positive reports since I started writing the Housing Market Tracker at the end of 2022. Everything I want to see in our weekend tracker for a healthy, positive housing market happened.

We have had a lot of dramatic events in 2026: an epic snowstorm, headlines about layoffs and AI taking all the jobs, and, most noticeably, the war with Iran. But so far, the housing market has weathered these storms as well as it could have. This weekend, the data shows that last week was clearly an outperforming week.

Let’s take a look to see what is going on.

Weekly pending sales

Our weekly pending home sales data provides a week-to-week perspective, though results can be affected by holidays and short-term fluctuations such as Easter weekend. Two weeks ago, I chalked up the housing demand recovery to the Easter rebound, but last week, there was a noticeable pickup in demand in our weekly pending home sales data.

That data is at a multiyear high for the calendar week; maybe some of this is a rebound from recent mortgage rate declines. I’m not sure we can grow much from these levels, as this is a multi-year high in weekly pending sales, but it will be exciting to watch in the coming weeks.

Weekly pending sales usually take 30-60 days to hit the sales data. Typically, mortgage rates above 6.64% and those breaking over 7% really impact the data negatively. Under 6.25% has been the sweet spot over the past several years, excluding short-term variables. Mortgage rates did get close to 6.25% recently, but they’re not quite there yet.

Weekly pending sales last week over the last two years:

• 2026: 80,258
• 2025: 67,892

Mortgage purchase application data

Purchase application data is a forward-looking indicator: growth here leads home sales by roughly 30-90 days. Last week, we saw a 10% week-to-week gain and a 12% year-over-year increase. That’s a nice snapback here from softer data, driven by higher rates due to the Iran conflict. Mortgage rates have recently fallen from a high of 6.64% to a low of 6.29%, so that was definitely one factor in this positive move. 

For purchase apps, what I really value is at least 12-14 weeks of positive week-to-week data. If we can get that positive week-to-week data to go with year-over-year growth, then we have something cooking. For 2026, we are basically flat on the week-to-week data, while showing positive year-over-year data up until rates rose. 

Here’s 2026 so far:

• 7 positive week-over-week prints
• 7 negative week-to-week prints
• 1 flat week-to-week print
• 8 weeks of double-digit year-over-year growth
• 13 weeks of positive year-over-year growth
• 2 negative year-over-year print

New listings

Last week had the most exciting new listings report for me in a while. I have been waiting for a normal year in new listing data for years, which means we would have at least a few weeks where this data line just trends between 80,000 and 100,000. This level was normal between 2013 and 2019. Last year, we got above 80,000 for a few weeks, but we couldn’t grow past that. Last week, we rose above that level, and I hope we can grow from here. 

Context for those who think the sky is falling anytime we get growth in new listings: during the housing bubble crash, new listings ranged from 250,000 to 400,000 per week for several years.

Here is last week’s new listings data for the past two years:

• 2026: 83,395
• 2025: 69,891

Housing inventory

Another huge, huge positive for me this week: inventory growth. We were on the verge of heading into negative territory with lower new listings data, which isn’t very healthy. While inventory growth has slowed significantly from last year, it is still growing. Higher weekly pending sales, higher new listings, and higher inventory are a chart daddy hat trick — this is as good as it gets!

Inventory growth is running at 4.98% year over year, down from 33% last year, but this week is a big victory.

• Weekly inventory change: (April 17-April 24): Inventory rose from 743,006 to 765,048
• Same week last year: (April 18-April 24): Inventory rose from 719,403 to 728,758

Price-cut percentage

Now the only thing that could have made this tracker perfect was the price cut percentage being flat at least, but it did take a slight decline this week, as demand has had a nice kick recently. 

Typically, about one-third of homes undergo price reductions before they sell, reflecting the dynamic nature of the housing market. 

In my 2026 home-price forecast, I had a negative 0.62% call for the year nationally. However, mortgage rates were lower than I thought they would be at the start of this year, and the FHFA’s announced purchase of mortgage-backed securities pushed mortgage spreads lower than I expected earlier in the year. I believed we would get toward the 1.80% level later.

The price-cut percentage is lower than last year and has been most of the year; this week’s decline caught my eye. 

The price-cut percentage for last week:

• 2026: 34.22%
• 2025: 36%

10-year yield and mortgage rates

In the 2026 HousingWire forecast, I anticipated the following ranges:

• Mortgage rates between 5.75% and 6.75%
• The 10-year yield fluctuates between 3.80% and 4.60%

As crazy as this sounds, even with all the nutty headlines about the Iran war, Jerome Powell, Kevin Warsh, and inflation, mortgage rates didn’t move much, as spreads have kept volatility in check. I talked about Kevin Warsh and what his appointment as Fed Chair could mean for housing in this episode of the HousingWire Daily podcast.

Warsh’s fate as Fed Chair is a constantly moving target as news broke Friday that the Department of Justice was dropping the probe against Jerome Powell (which would pave the way for a vote for Warsh), which I wrote about here with a ton of charts. But then comments from President Trump on Saturday seemed to contradict that stance.

For now, as long as the Iran war doesn’t worsen and the labor data doesn’t improve too much, 6.64% might have been the high of the year for mortgage rates, and the 10-year yield at 4.48% could be the top.

Mortgage rates ended the week at 6.32% according to Mortgage News Daily and 6.39% according to the Polly rate lock data.

Mortgage spreads

Mortgage spreads remain a positive story for housing in 2026, as mortgage rates would have easily been over 7% in 2023 and 2024, and close to 7% in 2025, given the current 10-year yield level and the worst spread levels back then. Spreads have improved over the last few weeks, almost getting back to the lows in 2026, which is a multiyear low at that.

Historically, mortgage spreads have ranged from 1.60% to 1.80%. Last week, spreads closed at 2%, down from 2.05% the week before.

However, I wanted to compare last week’s rates to the worst levels of spreads over the past three years, given the 10-year yield’s current level.

• If we had the worst mortgage spread levels of 2023, mortgage rates would be 7.50% today, not 6.32%.
• If we had the worst levels of 2024, mortgage rates would be 7.12% today.
• If we had the worst levels of 2025, mortgage rates would be 6.93% today.

The week ahead: Iran, Fed meetings, inflation, housing starts, and more

It’s the weekend, which means we tend to get crazy headlines about the Iran war, including news on Saturday that ceasefire meetings fell through. It will make for an interesting Sunday night for future pricing and Monday morning for bonds and oil prices. 

This week, we have the Federal Reserve meeting, which will most likely be the final one with Powell as Fed chair. We will also get the inflation report, home-price data, and housing starts data. We are getting to the point where food inflation will start to creep into some of the data lines. The longer this war goes on, the more inflation will hit some of the data lines. Hopefully, we’ll get some closure on this topic soon.

Amid all the news and data, I will be headlining The Gathering in Austin this week. Talk about timing!