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A buyer I talked with last month had been "waiting for rates to drop" for over a year. She'd watched the number tick between 6% and 7% so many times she'd started refreshing rate sites the way some people check the weather. In that year, the house she almost bought went up in value. Her rate never got meaningfully lower.
If you've been holding off on buying because you're waiting for rates to fall, it's worth looking at what's actually happening right now, and what the people who track this for a living expect next.
As of today, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate sits around 6.4% to 6.7%, depending on the lender. That's come down from the 7%-plus rates buyers were facing in late 2023, but it's not expected to move much lower in the near term. Fannie Mae's latest forecast projects rates holding around 6.4% for the rest of this year. The Mortgage Bankers Association expects something similar, closer to 6.5% through the third and fourth quarters. A recent poll of housing economists found the consensus is rates aren't expected to fall meaningfully anytime soon — inflation is still running above the Fed's target, and the Fed has signaled it's in no hurry to cut rates further.
None of this means rates can't move. They could tick down half a point if the economy shifts, or up if inflation runs hotter than expected. But "wait for it to get better" has been the plan for a lot of buyers for over two years now, and the number has mostly just moved sideways in a fairly narrow band. Meanwhile, home prices in Denver haven't stood still. Waiting for the rate to improve while the price keeps climbing can end up costing more than just buying at today's rate on today's price.
There's a real strategy buried in this, and it's simpler than people expect: buy the house that fits your life and your budget now, and treat the rate as something you can revisit later. If rates do drop in a year or two, refinancing is always on the table — you're not locked into today's rate forever. But you are locked out of today's price if you wait and the market moves without you.
This doesn't mean rushing into a house that doesn't work for you, or stretching your budget to make a deal happen. It just means the rate alone probably shouldn't be the reason you're sitting on the sidelines. If you find the right house and the payment works for your life today, that's usually worth more than chasing a number that may not move much regardless.
If you've been waiting for rates and want to talk through whether it still makes sense to wait, or whether it's time to actually look, I'm happy to run the numbers with you. Let's connect!
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