What moved in real estate, Sep 15–21, 2026

The Fed hiked, and most of the committee thinks another one is coming. The vote was 12-0 to raise the benchmark rate a quarter point to a 3.75%–4.00% range. The bigger news was the forecast that came with it: 16 of the 18 officials expect at least one more increase, and four of them think two more is possible. I bring this up because a lot of people are still waiting for the Fed to make buying cheaper. Right now the Fed is going the other way and saying so out loud.

Rates: 6.95% on the weekly survey, and the daily trackers are already past 7%. Freddie Mac's Thursday number came in at 6.95% on the 30-year fixed, up from 6.76% the week before and the highest since January 2025. The 15-year moved to 6.26%. Mortgage Daily had the 30-year at 7.01% this morning. Here's what that costs in real money: on a $350,000 loan, the move this month alone adds about $56 to the monthly payment, and you're paying roughly $160 more per month than someone who locked a year ago at 6.26%. If you were pre-approved in August, that number is out of date. Worth re-running before you go back out looking.

Buyers kept signing contracts anyway. Pending sales were up 0.3% in August nationally, with the South and West up and the Midwest down 1.6%. Signings are still 4.7% below last year and running about 30% below where they were before the pandemic. NAR's read is that higher rates are eating the buying power that job and income growth created. The flip side of a slower market is the part that helps you: more homes sitting, more sellers willing to negotiate, and a lot less competition on the good ones than you'd have had two years ago.

Builders pulled back on permits, which matters more for next spring than for this fall. Total housing starts fell 2.6% in August, though single-family starts rose 7.6% to 918,000 as builders finished what they'd already started. Permits, which tell you what's coming, dropped 2.7%. Builder confidence fell to 32 in September, the lowest reading this year. Translation: builders are still cutting prices and throwing in rate buydowns right now to move standing inventory, so the deals are there this fall. But the pipeline for spring is getting thinner.

Locally, a quiet week for news, which means the August MIBOR numbers are still the latest picture. Median single-family price across Central Indiana was $327,250, up 2.6% from last August. Pending sales were up 4.7% year over year, the sixth straight month of growth, while the national index was down 4.7% over the same stretch. Inventory sat at 6,941 homes, about a 2.5-month supply, and homes took a median 23 days to go under contract versus 17 a year ago. Sellers still got 98.2% of asking. The September numbers come out around October 9, and that will be the first local data built entirely on 7% rates.