Buy now before rates rise? What the data actually says.

Rob Thompson, Realtor, Iconic Colorado Properties

You are hearing it everywhere: rates are up, so lock in now before they climb higher. It is half of a true sentence. The half it leaves out is price. What a buyer actually pays every month is set by both, and the one number that captures both is the monthly payment. So let the payment do the arguing.

What the payment has actually done

The payment roughly doubled from 2021 to 2024 as rates spiked, and the "before rates rise" urgency was real then. But look at the last two years: the payment peaked in 2024 ($3,023) and has since fallen to about $2,834, roughly $189 a month lower - because prices and rates both eased. Recent history did not punish waiting. It rewarded it.

Run the scenarios yourself

Starting from today's median ($455,415 at 6.35%), here is what happens to the payment under the futures people argue about:

The "buy now" case only wins cleanly in one branch: rates rise and prices hold. In a market where prices are soft, higher rates get partly or fully offset by lower prices, and if rates fall the buyer who waited on price can win outright.

I say that a lot, and it always gets a laugh, then a question: what is the prenup? The prenup is protecting yourself against the one thing the popular version of this advice quietly assumes - that you will always be able to refinance. You may not. So you buy in a way that survives the rate never improving.

Start with the asymmetry the urgency pitch skips: you can never refinance the price you pay. A price is permanent. A rate is only sometimes fixable - a future refinance needs three things to line up at once: rates actually fall, you still qualify (credit, income, and enough equity), and the home appraises. In a soft-price market that last one bites - if values slip, a low appraisal can block the very refinance you were counting on. Date the rate is a hope, not a guarantee, and banking on it is its own risk.

So the prenup is simple: buy a payment you can genuinely live with at the rate you get today, as if it will never drop. If it does drop, that is upside, not the plan. And know whether your loan comes with a prenup built in - a VA loan (the VA IRRRL) or an FHA loan (the FHA Streamline) lets you lower your rate when rates fall without a new appraisal or income re-check, the strongest protection there is. Conventional loans have no such no-appraisal streamline, so conventional buyers especially should treat the payment they sign for as the payment, not a placeholder.

And is purchase activity really at a four-year high?

Not here. That claim is the national mortgage-application index, which bounced off a record low. Local closings, the purchases that actually happened, tell the opposite story:

This August was the lowest of the last four, not the highest. Applications are not closings, and national is not local. If anything, thin local activity is good news for a ready buyer: less competition, more room to negotiate price, concessions, and repairs.

The honest takeaway

The right move is not "buy now no matter what" or "wait for the perfect moment." It is the whole saying: date the rate, marry the house, and get a prenup - buy a payment that works at the rate you get today, remember price is the permanent commitment, and act when a specific home pencils for you. Test it yourself in the market simulator, or see the live demand and market index.