"At a Glance" Local Housing STATS and News 09/18/26

30-Year Fixed: 7.19% -0.05  |  15-Year Fixed: 6.81% -0.03

Rates eased back. Mortgage News Daily’s Thursday readings put the 30-year at 7.19% and the 15-year at 6.81%, down from Wednesday’s one year highs of 7.24% and 6.84%. The 10-Year closed Thursday at 4.94%, down 0.07, though it was back at 5.00% this morning.

Builders picked a lane in August. The Census Bureau reported total housing starts at 1,275,000 a year, down 2.6% from July, but single-family starts rose 7.6% to 918,000 while apartment building fell 22.5% to 344,000. Worth knowing before anyone leans on those numbers: Census puts a margin of plus or minus 12.0% on the total and plus or minus 14.0% on the single-family gain, so neither monthly move is big enough to be certain it happened.

Buyers came back a little. The National Association of REALTORS® said pending home sales rose 0.3% in August to an index of 71.2, still 4.7% below a year ago. The West led the month at plus 3.0%, and Lawrence Yun noted buyers “steadily entered into contracts in August even though mortgage rates increased.”

The local math. At Fremont’s median list price of $1,209,392, a 20% down loan is $967,514, under Alameda County’s $1,249,125 high-balance conforming limit. At 7.19%, principal and interest run about $6,561 a month, $33 less than at Wednesday’s 7.24%, and every eighth of a point is about $82.

Locally, supply jumped. Board wide: 2,771 listings across the 15 city table, counting active and in contract together, with 191 coming soon and 205 brand new. The five city ledger carries 723 live listings across Fremont, Hayward, Milpitas, Newark and Union City, 637 already on the market and 86 coming soon, fifteen more than Thursday.

Fremont holds 262 live listings, 207 active, 38 coming soon and 17 brand new, with a median on market list price of $1,209,392 at $797 a square foot and a typical active listing 29 days out. Behind it: Hayward 186, Milpitas 119, Newark 90 and Union City 66. Across all five cities the median is $1,099,999 at $685 a square foot, 283 homes are under a million, and 158 have been sitting 60 days or longer, unchanged from Thursday.

Union City added five more and the ledger posted its biggest one day gain in weeks. Buyers: more choice arrived this week and rates backed off, so it is a reasonable week to write. Sellers: you have fifteen more competitors than Thursday, so condition and price do the talking.

S&P 500: 7,637.76 +1.14%  |  Dow: 51,778.04 +0.61%  |  Nasdaq: 26,418.30 +1.69%

Thursday was a strong session, led by the Nasdaq. Friday opened softer: at 7:55 AM PT the S&P was down 0.12%, the Dow down 0.38% and the Nasdaq flat.

Nvidia did the heavy lifting, closing up 2.54% at $219.34 after Jensen Huang said the company will sell twice as many AI chips next year as this year. At 24.1 billion shares outstanding, that close puts Nvidia near $5.3 trillion in market value.

About today’s chart. Nvidia’s reported revenue went from $60.9 billion in fiscal 2024 to $215.9 billion in fiscal 2026, and the company guided in August to about 70% growth for fiscal 2028. That guidance is a growth rate, not a dollar figure. Applied to the roughly $396 billion analysts expect for this fiscal year it works out to about $673 billion, and applied to higher estimates, closer to $700 billion. The version of this chart going around prints $673 billion as if Nvidia had said it.

10-Year Treasury: 4.94% -0.07  |  Gold: $4,380.60 +1.81%  |  Silver: $65.72 +3.62%  |  Brent: $104.82 -0.95%

China’s slide at the Port of LA. China’s share of the containers coming through the Port of Los Angeles has fallen from 61% in 2020 to about 40% this year, and most of that drop happened in the last year alone. The port’s own figures show the same story in dollars: China and Hong Kong cargo was worth $120 billion in 2024 and $82 billion in 2025, a 32% drop. For us, that is the supply chain behind local goods prices and industrial space quietly rerouting through Mexico, Canada and Southeast Asia.

One caution on that 40%. It comes from a June 30 analysis of Port of Los Angeles and FreightWaves data, which labels the year an estimate. The graphic going around calls it a September confirmation from the port, and we could find nothing that confirms it, so we show it as an estimate.

Layoffs stayed low. New unemployment claims fell 10,000 to 196,000 for the week ending September 12, with 1.73 million people still collecting benefits.

Metals ran. At Thursday’s 1:00 PM PT print gold rose 1.81% to $4,380.60 and silver 3.62% to $65.72, and both were higher again Friday morning at $4,390.90 and $66.78. Brent settled at $104.82, down 0.95%, and was trading near $100 this morning.

A note on today’s newsletter numbers: it had the 10-Year at 4.93%, down 0.01, where Treasury shows a 4.94% close, down 0.07. It had Brent at $104.15, down 0.66%, where the settlement was $104.82, down 0.95%. And it had gold down 0.20%, where the same time prints show a 1.81% gain. Silver was left out again.

Bitcoin: $80,876 +5.61%  |  Ethereum: $2,578.42 +4.70%  |  XRP: $1.40 +7.08%

Live quotes pulled at 7:55 AM PT with 24 hour changes. All three are sharply higher, with XRP up about 7%.

The SEC opened a door. Crypto rallied after the SEC granted a five year “innovation exemption” on Thursday, letting qualifying venues trade tokenized U.S. stocks on public blockchains without registering as exchanges. Tokenized shares have to carry the same voting and dividend rights as the real thing, and companies can block third parties from tokenizing their shares. The newsletter’s Bitcoin figure checks out, but against Wednesday at the same hour Ether was up 1.72%, not 0.69%, and XRP was down 0.47%, not up 0.81%.