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Staten Island's eel populations are in a cold plunge.

Housing Market's Crucial "Spring Selling Season" Is In Tatters

Authored by Wolf Richter via Wolf Street,

Late last year and early this year, the story was that dropping mortgage rates, powered by big rate cuts from the Fed, would unleash demand in the housing market in the spring – the key spring selling season – and that sales volume would take off and that Realtors’ commissions would rocket to the moon.

And so that didn’t happen. Inflation has been reheating for months before the war and before the energy price spike. The energy price spike in March and April then added to that resurgence of inflation. The Fed is now talking about a possibility of rate hikes as next move. And longer-term Treasury yields, such as the 10-year Treasury yield, rose in March and April in response to inflation fears. Mortgage rates, which track those Treasury yields but are higher, rose back to the 6.5% range. And the housing market remained in the same-old-same-old frozen pattern that it has been in for four years after the price explosion from mid-2020 through mid-2022. And it continued in the latest week.

Mortgage applications to purchase a home – a measure of demand that may become actual home sales in the future, so a forward-looking indicator of home sales – dipped in the current survey week and remained near rock-bottom levels, down by 34% from the same week in 2019, according to data by the Mortgage Bankers Association today. That level of mortgage applications is below even the collapse of mortgage applications during the lockdown in the spring of 2020.

The average weekly mortgage rate for conforming 30-year fixed mortgages rose to 6.45% in the latest reporting week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association today.

For the past 7 weeks, this measure of mortgage rates has been back in the middle of the 6-7% range, the range it has been in since September 2022, except for some breakouts to the upside.

These mortgage rates are not high in a historical context; they’re only high in the context of the Fed’s QE which started in 2009 and took on mega-proportions during the pandemic.

Under its QE programs, the Fed bought trillions of dollars of securities, including mortgage-backed securities (MBS), which repressed mortgage rates below 3%. But this massive amount of reckless money printing was part of the toxic mix at the time that triggered the worst inflation in 40 years. With mortgage rates below 3% and inflation at 9% – negative “real” mortgage rates, better than free money – home prices exploded and are now too high. And that inflation has refused to go back into the bottle.

Pending home sales for March – deals that were signed in March but haven’t closed yet – also remained at rock bottom, down by 30% from March 2019. In January, they’d dropped to a record low in the data by the National Association of Realtors going back to mid-2010, and in February and March, they inched up from that record low.

And the much-hyped spring selling season has turned into the fourth dud in a row: 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026.

Mortgage applications to refinance a home instantly react to even small changes in mortgage rates. A dip in mortgage rates unleashes homeowners like a coiled spring to refinance a mortgage at even a slightly lower rate. And when mortgage rates rise after that dip, demand re-fizzles. These dynamics have been repeated several times since mid-2024.

Refis do nothing for the housing market, though they’re crucial for the income of mortgage brokers and lenders. But they may have a positive impact on consumer spending when they lower the mortgage payments and leave borrowers more money to spend on other stuff; or when they’re cash-out refis, the proceeds of which might then be used to pay down more expensive debts, or might be used for spending projects.

The up-front fees to be paid by homeowners when they refinance a mortgage – typically 1% of the mortgage balance – are generally added to the loan amount where they’re largely out of sight but increase the payment, which reduces the advantage of lower mortgage rates.

Homeowners can do a breakeven analysis with online calculators or through brokers and mortgage lenders, to see if refinancing a mortgage is worth it. When mortgage rates briefly drop and the breakeven analysis tilts their way, they pull the trigger, thereby creating these curious spikes in refis.

But even these spikes in refis since mid-2024 were relatively low compared to the two-year refi boom from early 2020 through 2021 when the Fed’s QE repressed mortgage rates below 3%, and everyone and their dog refinanced into these low-rate mortgages.

And now they’re part of the “lock-in effect,” when these homeowners avoid buying a new home, and thereby selling their current home, because the new home’s much higher price would have to be financed at a much higher mortgage rate, and that math doesn’t work very well for many people. But life does happen. My analysis: Update on the “Lock-in Effect” in the Housing Market: Below-3% & 4% Mortgages Fade Very Slowly

This longer view demonstrates the inverse relationship between mortgage rates (blue) and applications to refinance a mortgage (red):

In case you missed it: New Single-Family Home Prices Drop Further amid Inventory Glut. But Lower Prices Beget Higher Sales

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/10/2026 - 12:15

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Soaring Death Toll In Lebanon As Full-Fledged Israel, Hezbollah Fighting Returns

Full-fledged war has returned to Lebanon as the government has announced that at least 23 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes on Saturday alone. 

Stretching back into Friday, this brings the total death count to at least 50 killed over the past 24 hours of Israeli bombings, also as Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) late on Saturday said rescue operations were still ongoing for bystanders missing underneath the rubble.

Illustrative prior image: Getty

Heavy bombing has not ceased in southern Lebanon, as the Israeli military says it's trying to root out and destroy Hezbollah, including raids on the districts of Nabatieh, Bint Jbeil and Sidon, among others. Several were also killed in Tyre on Friday.

But Israeli forces have also absorbed casualties, with The Times of Israel describing the following serious drone strikes launched from Lebanon:

On Saturday, the terror group launched several salvos of explosive-laden drones and rockets at Israeli forces. One drone struck Israeli territory, close to the border with Lebanon, seriously injuring a reservist soldier and moderately wounding a reservist officer and another reservist soldier.

The troops were taken to Galilee Medical Center, which said the seriously wounded soldier underwent surgery and was now stable in the intensive care unit. The moderately wounded troops were scheduled for surgery later.

In another incident, the military said an explosive drone struck an unmanned engineering vehicle in southern Lebanon, causing damage. No injuries were caused.

There are reports of the IDF issuing evacuation orders for various areas, only to attack the so-called safe zones. For example the below comes via Israeli sources:

"In light of the Hezbollah terror organization’s violations of the ceasefire agreement, the IDF is forced to act against it with force and does not intend to harm you," warned army spokesman Col. Avichay Adraee.

Meanwhile, Lebanese media reported that Israeli airstrikes on Saturday killed at least 12 people, including in areas where no evacuation orders were issued.

Starting in late April a 10-day ceasefire brokered by Washington took effect, even as Israeli forces remain deployed in a strip of Lebanese territory several miles deep along the border. That appears to be effectively collapsed, also as Israel has been upping its targeting of Beirut suburbs of late.

Israel calls the Lebanese strip of land now occupied by IDF troops a 'buffer zone' - but Lebanon sees it as a land grab. Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally and leader of the Amal Movement - which is the other big Shia organization in Lebanon - has recently stated that if Israel "maintains its occupation, whether of areas, positions, or by drawing yellow lines, it will smell the scent of resistance every day." He added: "If they insist on remaining, they will face resistance, and our history bears witness to that."

Israeli airstrikes on vehicles south of Beirut killed 4 people, while strikes in southern Lebanon killed at least 13, state media and the Health Ministry said.

Iran war: https://t.co/GEBscM5Zz2 pic.twitter.com/6mHpjCkVis

— Sky News (@SkyNews) May 9, 2026

Lebanese officials have also charged Israel with trying to erase the Lebanese presence in southern Lebanon in a genocidal act, or 'cultural genocide'.

This after Israeli forces have carried out demolitions in southern villages, targeting what they describe as Hezbollah infrastructure embedded in civilian areas.

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