The headlines impacting mortgage rates

Political headlines drove the rate outlook more than the usual housing data. Logan Mohtashami said the market had been moving toward a path for mortgage rates under 7%, but CoreWeave’s earnings, the Nvidia-related headlines, Trump’s tougher trade-war talk, and renewed uncertainty around Iran all pushed the 10-year yield higher and made that path harder. He argued that sub-7% mortgage rates still remain possible, but only if the 10-year yield gets below 4.85% and mortgage spreads improve.

On housing demand, the latest existing-home-sales report was described as backward-looking rather than a fresh signal. Logan said the monthly print was a 16-month low, but not a historic collapse, and that more recent weekly pending-home-sales and purchase-application data had started to stabilize. He said that early stabilization matters more than the stale monthly release in the current environment.

He also pushed back hard on foreclosure-crisis narratives tied to the New York Fed’s Q3 credit data. Logan said the expected surge tied to the FHA moratorium ending never showed up, the data did not accelerate, and the episode’s foreclosure panic was mostly “doom porn.” His view was that foreclosures remain a slow, multi-stage process and that the latest quarter did not support a crisis story.