"Rates Are So High Right Now" — Are They, Though?
"I'll just wait until rates come down." I hear it almost every week, and I understand the instinct. But after 20+ years in the residential real estate industry, I owe you facts, not speculation: what most of us believe about mortgage rates right now isn't backed by the numbers. Let's walk through why.
The Rate Right Now
As of September 3, 2026, the average 30-year fixed rate was 6.71% (Freddie Mac).
If your reference point is a 3% mortgage, that sounds brutal. And yet Freddie Mac has tracked rates since 1971 — and against that full record, 6.71% isn't high. It's ordinary.
In fact, back when rates hit 6.39% in 2023, Freddie Mac pointed out something worth remembering: rates had been at that level or higher in 62.5% of every weekly survey since 1971. A "high" 6% rate was actually lower than what buyers dealt with most of the time historically — and when you run the full 50+ year numbers, the average rate during those "elevated" weeks was 9.4%, not the 6-7% we're anxious about today.
What "Normal" Has Actually Looked Like
Here's the decade-by-decade average, no spin:
1970s: ~8.9%
1980s: ~12.7% (peaking at 18.63% in October 1981)
1990s: ~8.1%
Today: ~6.5–6.75%
Millions of families bought homes, built equity, and built wealth in every one of those environments. A 6- or even 7-something rate isn't an obstacle. It's the norm.
So, Why Does It Feel So Wrong?
Because our baseline got hijacked.
After 2008, rates stayed unusually low for years. Then COVID hit, and the Fed took the extraordinary step of cutting its target rate to essentially zero and buying up enormous amounts of mortgage-backed securities to prop up the market. The result: 30-year rates averaged 3.11% in 2020 and 2.96% in 2021.
Those weren't "normal low" rates. They were once-in-a-generation rates, and they reset everyone's expectations.
Here's an analogy that really resonates with our clients: imagine a streaming service normally costs $12/month. For a while, they run an aggressive promo — $5/month — to pull in subscribers during a rough patch for the industry. Eventually, that promo ends and the price returns to $12. Sure, people might feel a little disappointed, and some might hope the discount comes back. And yet most people still understand the $5 was never the real price — it was a limited-time offer.
Pandemic-era mortgages worked the same way. The 2–3% rate wasn't the "real" rate — it was the temporary result of the Fed slashing short-term rates to zero and buying up mortgage bonds to prop up a shaky economy. That emergency pricing ended. Today's rate is closer to the actual, sustainable price of borrowing money.
The Real Cost of a "Cheap" Rate
Nobody's arguing that you shouldn't prefer a lower rate. Lower rate, lower payment, more buying power — that's just math. However, lower rates can come at a price.
Rock-bottom rates landed at the same time remote work freed people to want more space — a home office, a bigger yard — and, frankly, a fair amount of FOMO and "keeping up with the Joneses" urgency took hold, too. On top of that, a wave of first-time buyers flooded into the market. Inventory was already low, and an elevated demand decreased inventory to decades' low numbers. A record number of buyers chasing very few homes led to multiple offers, bidding wars, and buyers routinely paying over asking price. That combination — not the low rate by itself — pushed prices to unsustainable levels.
So the "savings" from a rock-bottom rate were never free — a big chunk of those savings was handed right back through a record-high purchase price.
Stop Grading Today Against 2020–2022
This is the mistake I see most often: buyers benchmarking today's market against the most abnormal three years in modern mortgage history. That period was a global pandemic plus emergency Fed intervention. It wasn't "normal on pause." It was the exception.
So instead of asking:
"Why aren't rates 3% anymore?"
Ask the question that actually matters:
"Given today's prices, rates, inventory, and my finances — does buying make sense for me, right now?"
That's a question we can actually help you answer. The other one just keeps you waiting on a rate that isn't coming back.
The Bottom Line
A 6.5% mortgage will never feel as good as a 3% one. And yet history is clear on this: every generation of buyers has faced a rate that felt tough at the time — 8.9% in the '70s, 12.7% in the '80s, 8.1% in the '90s — and every one of them still bought homes, built equity, and built wealth. Today's rate belongs on that same list. It's not the exception to it.
To be clear: now isn't the right time for everyone to buy. There are a lot of factors to weigh, and the interest rate is one of them — but it's not the only one.
Today's rates aren't high.
What changed is what we got used to.
Don't let the memory of 2021 talk you out of a decision that makes sense in 2026.
