"One mortgage rate, four markets, and a 25 percent outlier"

"One mortgage rate, four markets, and a 25 percent outlier"

The 30-year rate is identical in every American county, which is why it cannot explain a county that rose 25 percent while the region around it fell.

Emiliano Duarte

The San Francisco skyline seen at a distance across the bay in mist, no individual building or dwelling as the subject, no identifiable people and no signage in frame

Photo Anthony Sebbo / Unsplash

The 30-year mortgage rate is one national number, identical in every American county, and explains almost nothing. July's closings sat under an average of 6.54 percent, what lenders offer rather than what borrowers pay. The state realtors put San Francisco County's median sale price up 25.2 percent, on detached houses only and 10.3 percent fewer sales, while the region around it fell 1.2 percent.

San Francisco has shed more than 30,000 tech jobs in three years. Tech companies based there paid 44 percent of payroll to people working in the city in 2021, 11 percent by 2024. The money landed. The paychecks went elsewhere.