"At a Glance" Local Housing STATS and News 09/19/26

30-Year Fixed: 7.20% +0.01  |  15-Year Fixed: 6.83% +0.02

Rates barely moved to finish the week. Mortgage News Daily had the 30-year at 7.20% and the 15-year at 6.83% Friday, still a touch under Wednesday's one year high of 7.24%. The 10-Year Treasury closed at 5.01%, back to its own high for the year.

What the Fed's September projections mean for you, in plain terms. The Fed does not set mortgage rates, but it sets the tone. In June the typical Fed official expected the Fed's rate to be 3.8% at the end of this year. Now they expect 4.1%, which is about one more quarter point increase, and they expect it to come down more slowly after that. The reason sits in the same table: they see inflation at 3.7% this year. For a buyer, the plan of waiting for rates to drop just got a longer timeline.

The local math. At Fremont's median list price of $1,200,000, a 20% down loan is $960,000, under Alameda County's $1,249,125 high-balance conforming limit. At 7.20%, principal and interest run about $6,516 a month, and every eighth of a point is about $81.

Locally, supply eased. Board wide: 2,774 listings across the 15 city table, counting active and in contract together, with 189 coming soon and 239 brand new. The five city ledger carries 717 live listings across Fremont, Hayward, Milpitas, Newark and Union City, 631 already on the market and 86 coming soon, six fewer than Friday.

Fremont holds 255 live listings, 200 active, 37 coming soon and 18 brand new, with a median on market list price of $1,200,000 at $789 a square foot and a typical active listing 29 days out. Behind it: Hayward 186, Milpitas 116, Newark 91 and Union City 69. Across all five cities the median is $1,099,000 at $680 a square foot, 282 homes are under a million, and 158 have been sitting 60 days or longer.

Fremont gave back six listings and Union City added three. The 60 day pile has held at 158 for three days straight, which tells you the slow inventory is not moving rather than that buyers left. Sellers: price to today's 7.2%, not to the rate you had in mind in June.

S&P 500: 7,650.50 +0.17%  |  Dow: 51,682.64 -0.18%  |  Nasdaq: 26,522.54 +0.39%

Friday closed the week quietly and mixed, with the Nasdaq the only one of the three to make a real gain. Markets are closed for the weekend, so these are Friday's closing numbers.

10-Year Treasury: 5.01% +0.07  |  Gold: $4,424.90 +1.01%  |  Silver: $67.15 +2.18%  |  Brent: $103.87 -0.91%

A record year for conflict. The world had 65 active armed conflicts in 2025, the most since record keeping began in 1946, and 8 of them were one state fighting another, up from 2 in 2023. Thirteen counted as wars, the most since 1992.

Why that belongs in a housing letter. It is an energy and shipping story with a price tag. Brent crude settled at $103.87 Friday and has spent this year above $100, which feeds fuel, freight and insurance costs into almost everything else. That is the same inflation the Fed says will run 3.7% this year, and the reason its rate path moved up instead of down. Conflict abroad, then higher costs, then a slower path to cheaper money here. Gold and silver kept climbing on the same worry, gold up 1.01% Friday and silver up 2.18%.

One note on the chart. The widely shared version plots only the total. We added the state against state line from the same dataset, because that is the part that moves oil and shipping, and its 8 is a record too. Our early years also read lower than that version, because the research group revises its history with each release and we used one release throughout.

Bitcoin: $81,436 +0.68%  |  Ethereum: $2,641.20 +1.29%  |  XRP: $1.43 +2.47%

Live quotes pulled at 11:23 AM PT with 24 hour changes. All three held Thursday's gains into the weekend. That rally started when the SEC cleared tokenized U.S. stocks to trade on public blockchains under a five year trial.