Rates, Job Openings, Jot Cuts, Jobless Claims, ADP Annual Report, and NAR Home Equity Report

Good morning and happy Friday. Jordan Keck here, your lender buddy, with your weekly market update. Interest rates fairly unchanged week over week from 6.16% to 6.17%. This is for conventional purchase loans, top-tier scenarios, 25% down, big loan amount, a little bit of origination cost on it. So remember, this is not a rate quote. This is just an indication of where the average market rates are moving throughout the country for lenders in that scenario. So again, kind of unchanged. We did see rates go a little bit higher, but then come back down yesterday and today, hopefully continuing that forward. But hey, unchanged, a little bit of stability is definitely a nice thing. As far as the weekly mortgage tip, wanted to talk about another product launch we've got here. Been seeing already some success with this one, and it is an investment property 1 to 4 family construction financing. Very quick and easy. We don't require income documentation on the builder, on the person who's going to be building it, whether they're self-build or not. If they can do it as self-build, even without experience, a little bit lower loan to value or loan to cost on it. If they have experience, or if their builder has experience, at least 3 different builds in the last 3 years, can go up to 85% loan to cost, 75% loan to value. And if they don't have experience, can usually cap out at around 80% loan to cost. Very easy program on this one. We're not requiring debt service. We're not requiring income, just based on it being an investment property and the loan to cost value there. So if you have questions on this one, anyone who's interested in not having to do a huge amount of paperwork and underwriting of traditional construction financing, want to do a 1 to 4 family investment, let me know. Can do that. Of course, I also have programs for owner-occupied construction if you've got a client needing that. Next up, the December JOLTS job openings report came in showing a very weak 6.5 million job openings, the lowest number since 2020. The market expected 7.2 million, so coming in 700,000 short of that. And the previous reading for November was revised down from 7.15 to 7.63. Adding further weakness to this huge miss of a number. The hiring rate within the report did rise slightly from 3.2% to 3.3%, just off the lowest level since 2013 when removing COVID, and the quit rate remained at 2% even. Next up, the January Challenger report showed 108,000 job cuts, which was triple the number for December. It is fairly common to see more cuts in January after the seasonal hiring in December, but This was double the cuts that we saw for the same month in 2025 and is the highest amount in that month since 2008. So the most job cuts in January since 2009. Excuse me. Plans to hire were also extremely low in the report and showed the lowest on record for the month since they started tracking 17 years ago. We also saw initial jobless, initial jobless claims rose 22,000 and continuing claims rose 25,000 for the week. Initial claims, 231,000, fairly normal with what we've been seeing, maybe a little bit elevated but still within a normal range. And then continuing claims, after we've seen a big decrease from nearly 2 million coming down to 1.84 here for the week. While that is a little bit lower than we've seen, the 1.9 to 2 million mark for continuing claims, a lot of that may be due to the benefit expiration, as we saw a big uptick in claims around 6 months ago, and a lot of those could be dropping off. Not necessarily meaning that those people have found work, but just their benefits have been expiring. Next, we also saw ADP release their full annual job report for 2025. It showed a lot of weakness because this brings in a lot of the revisions. Initially, they reported, they reported 398,000 jobs created for the full year, which was after a 212,000 downward revision because of the annual data that they have. It means there were only 33,000 jobs created per month on average, and that could go lower because there are still future revisions to come on this report. January of 2026 showed just 22,000 jobs created, less than half of the 48,000 expected. And again, as we're seeing with the annual report, by the time that the end of the year comes, we might even see more revisions to that number for January of 2026. And lastly here, per an article from the National Association of Realtors, two-thirds of U.S. wealth is in home equity. They cited how values have risen in 78 out of the last 83 years, and how the median homeowner over the last 5 years has gained $150,000 in net worth. Means as a median number, half of homeowners were less than that, and half of owners had more than $150,000 increase in net worth over the last 5 years. We also probably already know the statistic that homeowners now have 44 times higher net worth than that of renters. So regardless of the headlines, if you or your clients are looking out there and seeing any negativity, real estate is still the American dream and one of the best creation— the best wealth creation vehicles out there. So just again, be optimistic here. Look at how impactful it is for wealth, the creation that it has done, still can do in the future here. And honestly, one of the foundational aspects of a great retirement plan is having a house you're able to pay it off, keep your expenses low, maybe a rental property or two, and great aspect of your financial plan there. As always, hopefully this is helpful. Have a fantastic weekend, and we'll see you next time. Take care.