Mortgage Rates Slide For Second Straight Week
California’s housing market enters late August pulling in two directions at once. Mortgage rates eased for a second straight week, offering modest relief after a summer spike, but pending home sales still retreated as buyers who could wait, did. Builders remain cautious, with confidence stuck near multi-year lows and price cuts common in the West. Yet demand hasn’t vanished — it’s concentrated: San Francisco is seeing bidding wars fueled by AI-industry wealth, with all-cash offers and price records making it an outlier even within a state where affordability keeps falling short of the governor’s housing targets.
In The News:
Freddie Mac — Mortgage Rates Decline for Second Consecutive Week (August 20, 2026) — Freddie Mac’s weekly survey showed the 30-year fixed rate slipping to 6.65% and the 15-year to 5.95%, the second straight weekly decline. Both remain above year-ago levels near 6.58%, but Chief Economist Sam Khater called the dip modest relief for buyers, encouraging borrowers to shop multiple lenders since rates and fees can vary meaningfully on the same loan type.
National Association of Realtors — NAR Pending Home Sales Report Shows 2.3% Decrease in July (August 18, 2026) — Contract signings fell 2.3% nationally in July and 2.2% from a year earlier, with the West region hit hardest at a 4.7% monthly drop and a 7.1% annual decline — the steepest of any region. Chief Economist Lawrence Yun tied the pullback to the summer’s peak mortgage rates, which landed right as many buyers were finalizing decisions.
National Association of Home Builders — Affordability Pressures Keep Builder Confidence Low (August 17, 2026) — Builder confidence ticked up one point to 35 in August, its 16th straight month below the key 40 threshold, while the West region held flat at just 27 — the weakest reading among major regions. Chief Economist Robert Dietz noted roughly a third of builders cut prices to move inventory, underscoring how affordability keeps constraining new construction even as sentiment stabilizes.
ABC7 News (via CNN) — A Million Dollars Over Asking: AI Wealth Fuels San Francisco Housing Frenzy (August 17, 2026) — San Francisco’s median home price has climbed to roughly $1.7 million, its fastest growth in nearly a decade, as tech and AI wealth pours into the market. One in three Bay Area sales this spring were all-cash, and 144 homes sold for at least $1 million over asking in the first half of the year, compared with just eight a year earlier.
KALW — Few California Municipalities Have Met New Housing Goals (August 24, 2026) — A progress check on Governor Newsom’s goal of adding 2.5 million housing units by 2030 found only about 30% of California jurisdictions on pace to meet market-rate targets, and just 32 cities and counties on track for very-low-income goals. A mere five are meeting every affordability benchmark at once, with critics noting cities can streamline permitting but can’t force developers to build.
