Potential signs of a friendlier housing market
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 15 January 2026
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
2025 was a tough year for homebuyers. Two things happened over the last three months of the year that helped people trying to buy a home: Housing prices grew more slowly, and mortgage rates fell. We'll unpack and discuss other housing news. Also on today's program: how the wealth effect is supporting our K-shaped economy, and how the bond market is responding to pressures on the Fed to lower interest rates.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Explaining the money burning a hole in your pocket effect. I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. First, |
| 0:07.7 | 2025 was a tough year for homebuyers. Now, that said sales for used houses and apartments jumped |
| 0:14.1 | toward the end of last year. Marketplace of Nancy Marshall-Genzor is here. Nancy, what are some of the |
| 0:18.7 | forces at work? Well, David, two things happened over the last three months of 2025 that helped people trying to buy a home. |
| 0:26.6 | Housing prices grew more slowly and mortgage rates fell. According to Freddie Mac, the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage in December was 6.19. |
| 0:36.6 | A year ago, it was closer to 7 percent. |
| 0:40.9 | And homebuyers were paying attention. As I say, the fresh existing home sales look stronger. |
| 0:46.8 | Yeah, the National Association of Realtors says existing home sales were up by about 5 percent last month. |
| 0:52.6 | After you adjust for seasonal factors, the association says |
| 0:55.3 | December sales were the strongest in almost three years. They increased month over month in all |
| 1:01.3 | parts of the country, and there was a year-over-year increase in the South. New home sales |
| 1:06.3 | in October edged down, but they were still higher than over the summer. |
| 1:15.7 | President Trump, Nancy, has been trying to take the edge off the high cost of buying a place to live. |
| 1:22.2 | He ordered, we reported on this, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy up to $200 billion in mortgage bonds. |
| 1:23.3 | Will that help? |
| 1:24.5 | It should. |
| 1:33.0 | Fannie and Freddie will be pushing up demand for these bonds. And, course, when demand rises, investors have to accept a lower yield or interest rates. |
| 1:44.1 | Now, Trump also announced he's going to ban large institutional investors from buying more single family homes, but he would need Congress to enact a law he could enforce on that. |
| 1:49.5 | Trump says he'll talk more about this at the World Economic Forum next week in Davos, Switzerland. |
| 1:56.6 | All right. The benchmark 10-year interest rate is up just slightly, 4.15%. The average 30-year fixed rate mortgage is not down in the wake of word earlier this week, that the Justice Department |
| 2:01.7 | has a criminal investigation going into the chair of the Federal Reserve amid questions about a |
| 2:06.7 | construction project at Fed headquarters. How have financial market players been reacting to what |
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