"At a Glance" Local Housing STATS and News 08/07/26

30-Year Fixed: 6.77% ● 0.00%  |  15-Year Fixed: 6.30% ● 0.00%

Rates held. The 30-year fixed is still 6.77% and the 15-year is still 6.30%. Mortgage News Daily publishes its index late in the afternoon, so today’s reading is not out yet and these are Thursday’s numbers, unchanged from yesterday.

The big one for our business: United Wholesale Mortgage, the largest mortgage lender in the country, lost $452 million last quarter and ended its dividend. The stock closed down 34.78% after being off as much as 49% at one point. Read the mechanism rather than the headline. Lenders earn on volume, and volume is a function of how many people are willing to borrow at 6.77%. If the largest player is losing money at these rates, expect smaller lenders to tighten, merge, or quietly disappear over the next few quarters. That changes who your buyer can actually get a loan from.

HOA foreclosures are up nearly 40% from two years ago, and this one lands directly in transactions. Associations are being squeezed by rising insurance premiums, deferred repairs, and thin reserves, so they are moving faster against owners who fall behind on dues. Three consequences follow: higher monthly dues, more special assessments, and in the worst case deferred maintenance that drags comparable values down for everyone in the association. If you are writing an offer on anything with an HOA right now, the reserve study and the insurance line are not boilerplate.

Why a REALTOR® cares: both of today’s stories are about the same thing, which is that the people who finance and maintain housing are under real pressure even though prices have held. Your buyer sees a listing. You should be seeing the lender behind the loan and the association behind the dues.

Today’s live board across our five focus cities shows 728 homes a buyer can actually pursue right now, up 22 on the day, including 53 brand new listings and 104 more coming soon. The full, always-updating ledger lives at harvrealtor.net/live-inventory.

Today’s Live Inventory (buyable now)

• Fremont: 288 available (217 active, 20 new, 51 coming soon)
• Hayward: 205 available
• Milpitas: 108 available
• Newark: 77 available
• Union City: 50 available

Median asking prices: Union City at $1,298,444, Fremont at $1,288,384, Newark at $1,248,000, Milpitas at $1,152,500, and Hayward at $849,000. Median days on market runs from 23 in Newark to 34 in Hayward. Board-wide the 15-city table carries 2,727 listings, up 23 from yesterday.

Fremont’s 51 coming soon is the number to watch. That is up from 46 yesterday and still by far the largest pipeline of the five cities, and it is stacking up in a market where the typical listing moves in 24 days. Hayward added 9 listings on the day and Fremont 7, with Milpitas up 4 and Union City up 2, while Newark held exactly even at 77.

S&P 500: 7,710 ▼ 0.18%  |  DOW: 53,885 ▼ 0.85%  |  NASDAQ: 26,348 ▼ 0.06%

A quiet red day with one loud exception. The S&P 500 eased 0.18% to 7,710 and the NASDAQ barely moved, off 0.06% to 26,348. The Dow did the heavy lifting on the downside, falling 0.85% to 53,885. Today’s newsletter printed that close as 54,885, exactly 1,000 points too high; the percentage it published was right, so this reads as a typing slip rather than a bad feed.

SpaceX was the real story. Early investors were finally allowed to sell when the lockup expired, releasing 911 million shares, roughly 7% of the company. Lockups exist so that everyone who got in early cannot cash out at once, and the usual result when one expires is a sell-off. Instead SpaceX rose 6.14%, which means buyers absorbed the entire wave.

Earnings closed the week unevenly. AppLovin dropped 19.66% after missing, blaming timing on its AI upgrades. Peloton fell 15.57% despite its first profitable quarter ever, because investors doubt it can repeat it. Warner Bros. Discovery rose 1.66% on streaming growth. Apollo also agreed to buy British airline EasyJet for $7.7 billion, and what it actually wants is the takeoff slots at crowded European airports. Same logic as paying up for the corner lot: the dirt is not what makes it valuable, the location is.

US 10-Year: 4.69% ▲ 0.06%  |  Gold: $4,305 ▲ 0.81%  |  Silver: $64.35 ▲ 4.07%  |  Brent: $82.49 ▲ 3.83%

Copper just set a record, and the reason behind it matters more than the number. The August 5 close of $6.70 a pound is the highest in the COMEX series going back to 2000. Thursday eased back a fraction to $6.69, and copper is up 18.6% so far this year.

Normally copper at a record is the most reliable sign there is that the world economy is booming. It goes into everything that gets built: wire, pipe, motors, roofs. This time it is not that. The move is being driven by supply disruptions at the mines and by data centers buying enormous quantities for AI buildouts. Broad construction demand is not what is doing it, which is why nobody is celebrating.

Silver went along for the ride and then some, jumping 4.07% to $64.35 an ounce, the largest one day move in the metals this week. Silver is half precious metal and half industrial input, and industrial metals are being bid hard right now. Gold added 0.81% to $4,305. Brent reversed hard, up 3.83% to $82.49, after Iran floated terms for the Strait of Hormuz that would keep U.S. and Israeli ships out and fine violators up to 20% of cargo value. About a third of the world’s oil moves through that strait, so the market took back yesterday’s discount immediately.

The 10-Year rose to 4.69%, up 6 basis points. Separately, Jamie Dimon spent the day warning about leverage nobody can see: margin debt, the money investors borrow from brokers to buy more stock, is at a record. When prices fall, lenders demand cash back and borrowers sell to raise it, which pushes prices down further. That is how an ordinary decline turns into a fast one.

Why a REALTOR® cares: copper and oil both feed construction and materials costs, so a record in one and a 3.83% jump in the other is a quiet tax on every renovation bid and new build estimate your clients see this fall. The 10-Year moving up 6 basis points is the nearer term signal, because that is the number mortgage rates follow.

BTC: $64,535 ▼ 0.11%  |  ETH: $1,907 ▼ 0.35%  |  XRP: $1.02 ▼ 2.67%

Barely moving, with XRP the weak name again. MARA, the largest publicly traded Bitcoin miner, lost money last quarter for a reason worth understanding: it holds roughly 35,000 Bitcoin worth about $2.1 billion, and accounting rules force it to write that pile down when prices fall. The mining operation itself did not break; the value of what it was already holding did. Separately, hackers took $130 million out of a cold wallet, which is storage kept deliberately offline precisely so it cannot be reached remotely. The keys had been left online by mistake, and the maker, Coinkite, will not confirm how much was actually taken.

Disclaimer: The market data, rates, and information provided are for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Always verify rates and data with your lender or financial advisor before making any decisions.