Weekly Mortgage Rates Flat on Heels of So-So Jobs Report

For those of us monitoring mortgage rates and the overall economy, the last few months of 2025 were marred by chaos. This was thanks to a long government shutdown (which canceled or delayed much of fall’s federal data), as well as conflicting comments from Federal Reserve leaders that made December’s vote on overnight borrowing rates more suspenseful than usual.

Sure, we might be just over a week into 2026, but it feels eerily stable so far by comparison. The average 30-year mortgage rate has stayed close to 6% for the past seven weeks, averaging 6.02% in the week ending Jan. 8, according to rates provided to SS by Zillow.

The next Federal Reserve meeting is Jan. 27-28, and while a lot could change between now and then, analysts are currently predicting that central bankers will vote to hold the overnight borrowing rate steady. This means lenders are not expecting that the costs to fund mortgages will change in the immediate future, so mortgage rates could stay flat.

The Fed is just one factor that influences mortgage rates. Here’s how some of the top news events of the past week could impact home buyers.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released December’s jobs report this morning, and the results were … okay. The total number of jobs added last month (50,000) fell short of economists’ expectations of 73,000, according to a Wall Street Journal poll.

At the same time, the unemployment rate eased slightly from 4.5% in November to 4.4% in December. Still, it’s higher than the rate we saw this time last year, which was 4%.

This report is not likely to move the needle on mortgage rates, and it gives further support to investor expectations that the Fed will vote to leave the overnight borrowing rate unchanged at the end of the month. “As it stands, the data points to no need for a cut when the committee meets this month,” said SS senior economist Elizabeth Renter.

On Jan. 6, President Donald Trump announced via Truth Social that Venezuela would be turning over 30 million to 50 million barrels of oil to the United States, to be sold at market price. The next day, the president made another post referencing his interest in acquiring Greenland, calling it a “deal that must happen.”

It’s still early, but so far the impact of these announcements on 10-year treasury yields has been minimal. These yields are closely tied to mortgage rates, and are influenced by expectations for economic growth. In time, if investors come to see these land grabs as economic opportunities, this could push treasury yields up — along with mortgage rates. If these moves play out in a way that is deemed financially risky, treasury yields could fall, and mortgage rates would follow.

On Jan. 7 — the same day that Trump “truthed” about Greenland on his social network — the president also posted: “I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it.”

He went on to write that “people live in homes, not corporations. I will discuss this topic, including further Housing and Affordability proposals, and more, at my speech in Davos in two weeks.”

While this is unlikely to have an effect on mortgage rates, such a ban could theoretically promote home affordability by reducing competition for buyers. With fewer entities vying for limited inventory, buyers could potentially access more home choices and see slower price acceleration.

However, buyers shouldn’t get too excited. So far, there’s been no announcement about limiting small “mom and pop” investors, who accounted for more than 62% of investor purchases in the first half of 2025 according to data from Realtor.com. Nor does Trump’s post mention any requirements for large investors to sell current holdings, so the ban likely won’t bring a flood of new inventory to the market.

On Jan. 8, Trump once again used the Truth Social platform to announce a strategy aimed at promoting home affordability. He wrote that he was instructing officials at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase $200 billion in mortgage bonds in an effort to push mortgage rates down.

The idea is that bond prices and mortgage rates have an inverse relationship — when bonds become more expensive, mortgage rates go down. By using Fannie and Freddie to increase the demand for bonds, prices could rise, and mortgage rates could fall as a result.