In this January 9, 2026 market briefing, Jordan Keck of LenderBuddy informs listeners that he will be out of the office for a conference and directs urgent matters to teammate Tyler. He reports that mortgage rates remain steady around 6.20‑6.21% but could shift after the upcoming BLS jobs report. Keck explains why lenders typically refuse to finance homes that are still listed for sale, noting high origination costs and the preference for loans to stay on the books longer, and suggests hard‑money or taking the property off the market as alternatives. He then reviews national rental trends, highlighting a 0.8% month‑over‑month rent decline, a 1.3% year‑over‑year drop, a record 7.3% vacancy rate, and longer days on market. Next, he summarizes Cotality’s November home‑price data: a 0.1% monthly dip, year‑over‑year growth slowing to 1.0%, and a projected 4.3% annual increase for 2026. The labor segment covers ADP’s December jobs report (+41 k, below expectations), JOLTS November openings (7.15 M, the lowest since 2020) and a hiring rate of 3.2%, and Challenger’s December job‑cut figure (35,553, the lowest in 17 months) alongside strong hiring plans. Finally, Keck previews the BLS December jobs report, noting market expectations of 60 k jobs and a unemployment rate drop to 4.5%, and explains how deviations from these expectations could move bond and mortgage rates. He closes with a reminder to stay informed for client advising.
Chapters
Good afternoon and happy Thursday. Jordan Keck here, LenderBuddy, coming to you a day early. I will be out of the office tomorrow through Monday traveling for an education conference I'll be going to down in Sedona, but wanted to get this information out to you early. Of course, in the meantime, my team will be covering I have limited access to calls and texts in the meantime. So if you need anything quickly, reach out to Tyler. Probably worked with him before. He's amazing. He is licensed, can get preapproval letters out, has access to my notes, and can get new clients started while I'm gone. So won't miss a beat. As far as interest rates, still staying very, very steady. Last week at 6.20%, this week at 6.21%. Showing not a whole lot of change there, but that could change tomorrow with the BLS jobs report coming out. And we'll touch base on that a little bit here. But first off, weekly mortgage tip, wanting to talk about financing homes that are listed for sale. Had this come up a few different times where somebody has a home listed for sale, they have equity in it, maybe they want to take that equity out to use as a down payment on their next purchase before it sells. Maybe they want to use that equity to fix up their current home, whatever it may be. Unfortunately, the vast majority of all lenders and lending types, whether it's HELOCs, whether it's full refinancing, are going to want to have that property taken off of the market before they finance it. The reason being for that is if they know that the home's listed for sale, they might go through the entire process of doing the loan and then have it be paid off in a month or two. Most lenders actually— the cost for originating a mortgage across the country, they've done several surveys, is typically somewhere between $8,000 to $12,000 in costs to start that mortgage. So of course, if they want to make back that money, they have to have the loan on their books for a certain amount of time. So if they know it's going to be paid off in a month or two, most lenders aren't keen to do it. Can you get money out? Yes. Oftentimes you're looking at maybe doing hard money loan if it's still listed, or taking it off of the market to financing it first. Next up, looking at rents from apartment lists for December fell 0.8%, which is the fifth month straight of declines. Year over year, they reported rents are down 1.3%, which is lower than the 1.1% that we saw for November. So we're accelerating the rate of declines. They've been declining on a year-over-year basis for the last roughly 2.5 years. This is certainly caused by higher vacancy rates. I mean, we've been seeing that for a while. The report showing an all-time high of 7.3% for vacancy rates since they started recording this number. And the average rental days on market has also increased to a new high from 36 to 38.7. So pretty big jumps there month over month. Next up, Cotality's November report showed home prices down 0.1% for the month. Year over year is still up, but only showing, uh, slowing from 1.1% year over year growth last month to just 1.0% this month, showing homes basically the same and of course slowing down on that rate of growth. They're still projecting December to be flat, but a 4.3% growth rate for 2026. If that were to happen, that means a $500,000 home would gain about $21,000 of value during the year, or an average of $1,750 per month. Which is, if you're talking with clients, probably what they're paying or close to it in the rent right now anyway. Next, the ADP's December jobs report showed 41,000 jobs created, below estimates of 50,000. The previous report was revised slightly from a negative 32,000 to a negative 29,000. Not really changing it because it's still a miss on the headline number. Small businesses stopped losing jobs. We saw a lot of small businesses lose jobs in the previous few months and actually added 9,000 for the month. Large companies only added 2,000. So the vast majority of business, medium-sized businesses were the ones adding jobs, which added a net of about 34,000. The JOLTS showed report for the month of November showed 7.15 million job openings, which is quite a bit below estimates of 7.6. October was also revised lower from 7.67 to 7.45, which is the lowest number of openings, openings since the end of 2020. The hiring rate also fell from 3.4 to 3.2%, which ties the lowest level since 2011. When removing COVID and shows continued slowdown in hiring. Next up, the Challenger December report showed 35,553 job cuts. This is actually a fairly low level for it, but it's not entirely surprising. I mean, it's the lowest level in 17 months, and plans to hire were 10,496, which is the strongest December in 3 years. But you always want to take it with a grain of salt around the holidays. Because very few employers are going to want to have large layoffs right before Christmas, and a lot of them will also do seasonal hirings around the holiday period. So it's nice to see a strong report, but one report does not make it a trend. So we'll continue to watch this in the coming months. And lastly here, a little preparation since I'll be gone for tomorrow. The big news coming out will be the BLS jobs report, which could be a big market mover one way or the other, whether it comes in above or below expectations. Remember, the thing that moves markets is not the headline number, it's if that number is higher or lower than expectations. Market right now is expecting 60,000 job creations for the month of December and the unemployment rate to drop from 4.6% to 4.5%. Anything worse than that could be good for bonds and mortgage rates. Anything better than that is likely going to hurt them. So if you happen to be watching it and you see, let's say that there were 80,000 job creations, then that's not a great thing because it's higher than the expectation. If we only see 20,000 job creations and let's say unemployment rate goes up, that is likely going to be very good for mortgage rates. As always, hopefully this is helpful for you, keeps you on top of your game and being able to help your clients and advise them correctly. Well, have a great weekend. We'll see you next time. Take care.
