Portland Mortgage Market Update — October 23, 2026

Turns out this whole AI thing is kind of expensive. The market got reigned in a bit this week with the release of the Gartner "Extinction" Report. Garmin, a massive global advisory firm, issued a report that forecasts that 80% of the independent neocloud companies will cease to exist or be bought out by 2030. A neocloud buys the GPUs that make AI run, then leases space, electricity and cooling from datacenters. In order for them to be profitable, they need to earn about 18% return on investment capital, and based on simple models this won't take place until 2032. And that doesn't even take into account having to onboard new, faster chips as they are released, so the market saw this and realized there might be some more risk to the AI buildout than expected, and came running back to the safety of US Treasuries which helped rates see a pretty significant rally yesterday, improving by about 50 basis points.

We can't have nice things. I said the rally was yesterday, because today we are in the red due to escalations in Iran. The US has ordered non-emergency government employees to leave Saudi Arabia, and the US and Israel have announced they have drawn up plans for a renewed "short but intensive" operation to take place after the mid-terms. (As an aside, the whole pausing of the war until midterms are done is weird to me on so many levels). As a result, Oil spiked up to over $110/barrel putting upward pressure on inflation, and rates have lost almost half of their gains from yesterday as a result.

More Down Payment Assistance coming soon! Mortgage Express is now listed as an approved lender for the Oregon Flex "First Home" and "Next Step" down payment assistance programs. These are fantastic options for renters wanting to buy or anyone looking to move up but doesn't have the funds for a down payment. We go live with it on November 1but feel free to reach out anytime with questions or if you want to put together some marketing to bring some new buyers to homeownership.