Mortgage rates, ZHVI, and regional momentum.
FRED mortgage rate series, Zillow ZHVI by metro, regional price momentum, and a 30-day LSTM forecast. Data synced nightly via Celery at 02:00 UTC.
The benchmark rate for 30-year fixed mortgages, tracked weekly by FRED. Each 100bps move changes the monthly payment on a median-priced home by roughly $200–250, enough to price out a significant share of buyers and suppress demand.
Same principal paid off in half the time at a lower rate, but the monthly payment runs 30–40% higher than the 30Y equivalent. Typically chosen by buyers refinancing into equity or those with the income to support the higher obligation.
The median sales price of houses sold nationally (FRED, quarterly). Sustained appreciation against rising rates reflects a structural supply shortage — residential construction hasn't kept pace with household formation since 2008, keeping inventory constrained.
Median time from listing to accepted offer (Realtor.com via FRED). A falling DOM in a high-rate environment signals supply is still tight enough that buyers are competing; rising DOM shifts negotiating leverage toward the buyer.
The Fedcontrols the overnight rate directly, but mortgage rates are priced off the 10-year Treasury — a market-determined rate that reflects long-term inflation expectations rather than near-term policy. As a result, mortgages often reprice before the Fed formally acts, and don't track hikes or cuts 1:1. All three series pulled live from FRED; the dashed line marks today.
| Metro | ZHVI | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Akron, OH | $238K | +4.1% |
| Albany, NY | $364K | +5.1% |
| Albuquerque, NM | $350K | +0.9% |
| Allentown, PA | $361K | +3.0% |
| Atlanta, GA | $382K | -2.3% |
| Augusta, GA | $247K | +2.6% |
| Austin, TX | $430K | -6.0% |
| Bakersfield, CA | $363K | -0.3% |
| Baltimore, MD | $403K | +0.8% |
ZHVI is Zillow's smoothed estimate of the typical home value in each metro — a trimmed median that filters distortions at the extremes of the distribution. Green YoY means the market has appreciated over the past 12 months; redmeans it's given back ground. Updated via Celery on the 17th when Zillow publishes monthly data.
Each cell is a tracked metro from the live Zillow ZHVI pull, colored by the z-score of its 3-month momentum relative to the cross-section. Deep green marks a market appreciating well above peers; deep red marks one cooling faster. Hover a cell for the metro and its momentum. Useful for spotting regional divergence that national averages obscure.
An LSTM trained on historical ZHVI series to capture seasonality and trend momentum, then extrapolated 30 days forward. The dashed line is the point forecast; the shaded band is the confidence interval — width reflects model uncertainty at that horizon. At 2.81% MAPE, expected error is roughly $12K on a $428K median.
Valuation & mean reversion.
Real (inflation-adjusted) home prices against their long-run exponential trend, with ±1σ/±2σ bands — today's deviation expressed as a mean-reversion z-score. Live from FRED.
Home-price valuation vs. trend
Real Case-Shiller vs. log-linear trend · mean-reversion bands · FRED · as of 2026-04-01