High Rates Don't Mean It's a Bad Time to Buy

"We're just going to wait until rates come down." I hear this constantly, and I understand the instinct completely. Nobody wants to lock in a rate that feels high, especially with headlines reminding everyone what things looked like a few years ago. But "wait for rates to drop" isn't a strategy, it's a guess about the future, and it usually comes with costs that don't show up until later. Let's actually walk through why. You marry the house, you date the rate This phrase gets used a lot in this business because it's true: your rate is not a life sentence. If you buy now at today's rate and rates drop meaningfully in a year or two, you refinance. You're not stuck. What you are stuck with, if you wait, is however much home prices and rates have both moved in the meantime, and neither of those is guaranteed to move in your favor. Buying today locks in the price of the home. It doesn't lock in your rate forever, because refinancing exists specifically for this situation. Waiting on rates usually means competing with more buyers later Here's the part that gets missed in the "just wait" plan: you're not the only one waiting. If and when rates drop meaningfully, a wave of buyers who've been sitting on the sidelines comes back into the market at the same time. More buyers competing for the same homes means more multiple-offer situations, less negotiating room, and upward pressure on prices. The environment you're hoping to buy into when rates drop is often a harder one to actually win a house in, not an easier one. Meanwhile, in a higher-rate market like the one we're in now, fewer buyers are competing, which means more room to negotiate. Sellers are more willing to talk price, cover closing costs, or contribute to a rate buydown to get a deal done. That negotiating leverage tends to shrink the moment rates come down and buyer demand rushes back in. Rates near 7% aren't actually historically unusual As of mid-September 2026, the 30-year fixed rate has been sitting in the high 6% to near 7% range. It feels high against the 3% rates from a few years ago, but those rates were the anomaly, not the norm. Looking back across the last 50 years, the average 30-year mortgage rate has been well above 7%. Today's environment is closer to a long-run historical norm than the ultra-low-rate period everyone's still anchored to. That doesn't make a higher payment feel better, I get it. But it's worth knowing that "waiting for rates like a few years ago" may mean waiting for a rate environment that was genuinely unusual to begin with, not the baseline you should expect to return to on any predictable timeline. Home prices don't usually wait for rates to drop Here's the piece that actually costs people the most money: home prices, especially in a market like Austin, don't reliably fall while everyone waits for rates to improve. Even in periods where rates stay elevated, prices tend to hold or continue climbing gradually because of limited inventory and steady population growth. A buyer who waits two years hoping for a better rate often finds the home that cost $425,000 today costs $460,000 by the time they're ready to act, and if rates haven't dropped as much as hoped, they're financing a higher price at a similar rate. That's a worse outcome than buying today and refinancing later if rates do improve. What buying now actually gets you You start building equity today, not whenever rates feel better. Every month you wait is a month of appreciation and principal paydown you don't get credit for. You lock in today's price, even if it needs refinancing math to work out perfectly later. You're negotiating in a market with less competition, which often means real concessions from sellers. You have real tools to manage the rate itself, discussed below, that reduce how much a "high" rate actually costs you in the near term. Tools that make today's rate less painful You don't have to just accept the sticker-shock rate at face value. A few tools worth understanding before you assume today's rate is a dealbreaker: Temporary buydowns. A 2-1 buydown, for example, reduces your rate by 2% in year one and 1% in year two, often paid for by the seller as a concession, before returning to the full note rate in year three. It softens the payment while you're getting settled, and if rates drop before year three, you refinance before the buydown even expires. Seller concessions toward rate. In today's market, with less buyer competition, sellers are often willing to contribute toward a permanent rate buydown (discount points) as part of the negotiation, effectively lowering your rate for the life of the loan in exchange for a small price concession. Refinancing when the time is right. This is the most important one. There's no cost to refinancing your intention later, only the (relatively modest) cost of the transaction itself when you do it. Buying now with a plan to refinance if and when rates improve isn't a consolation prize, it's a completely normal, common strategy. When waiting does make sense To be fair, waiting isn't always the wrong call. If your credit needs real work, if your down payment genuinely isn't there yet, or if your job situation is about to change in a way that affects your income documentation, those are real reasons to wait, and I'll tell you honestly if that's your situation. What doesn't hold up as well is waiting purely because the rate feels high right now, with no plan for what you're actually waiting for or how you'll know when it's "good enough." What I'd actually tell you to do Run the real numbers on your specific scenario, not a generic online calculator. What you can afford and what makes sense depends on your actual income, down payment, and goals. Ask about buydown and concession options before assuming the payment is fixed at face value. There's often more room than buyers expect, especially right now. Think in terms of total cost over time, not just the rate you see in a headline. Price, rate, and competition all move together, and waiting changes all three, not just one. Have an actual refinance plan, not just a hope. If you buy now, understand what rate improvement would make refinancing worth it later, so you're watching for the right trigger instead of guessing. The bottom line A high rate is a real cost, and I'll never tell a client to ignore that. But "wait until rates drop" usually means waiting into more competition, higher prices, and no guarantee the rate actually improves on your timeline. Buying now, with a real plan and the right tools to manage the payment, is often the stronger move even in a market like this one. If you've been sitting on the sidelines because of the rate, let's actually run your numbers before you decide to keep waiting. Sometimes the math surprises people.