Let me guess. You’ve been waiting.
Waiting for rates to drop. Waiting for the “perfect moment.” Waiting for some magical headline that says now. And every month that passes, the waiting gets a little more expensive.
I want to be straight with you, because that’s worth more than telling you what you want to hear.
WHERE RATES ACTUALLY ARE RIGHT NOW
As of late May 2026, the 30-year fixed is sitting in the mid-6% range — most surveys have it between roughly 6.4% and 6.7% depending on the day and the lender. Rates ticked up over the past couple of weeks on global uncertainty, but zoom out and the picture is calmer than the headlines suggest.
A year ago, that same 30-year fixed was closer to 6.9%. So we’re actually down from where we were last spring, not up. The drama is mostly noise.
WHEN WILL THEY COME DOWN?
Here’s the honest answer: probably a little, probably slowly, probably not the way most people are hoping.
Most major forecasts — Fannie, Freddie, the MBA — land in the same neighborhood: rates drifting toward the high-5% to low-6% range by the end of the year. The Fed is widely expected to make a couple more quarter-point cuts in 2026, but here’s the part people get wrong.
Mortgage rates don’t follow the Fed. They follow the 10-year Treasury yield, which moves on inflation and the broader economy. So even when the Fed cuts, your mortgage rate might barely flinch. We saw exactly that play out in 2024 and 2025 — the Fed cut, and rates didn’t crater.
Translation: don’t hold your breath for a 4% headline. The consensus says modest improvement, not a return to the pandemic era.
THE WAITING GAME HAS A PRICE TAG
This is the part nobody puts on a billboard.
Let’s say you wait six months for rates to drop half a point. Great — except in a market like Greater Las Vegas, where the median is sitting just below an all-time record high, home prices likely won’t sit still while you wait. If prices climb even 2-3% in that window, you’ve quietly erased most of your “rate savings” — and you’ve also missed six months of equity building and locked-in payment certainty.
You can always refinance a rate. You can’t go back and buy at last year’s price.
SO WHEN IS A GOOD TIME TO BUY?
When the home, the payment, and your life all line up. That’s it. That’s the formula.
If you find the right property, you can comfortably afford the monthly number at today’s rate, and you plan to stay put for a while — that’s a good time. If rates fall later, you refinance and your payment drops. You win twice.
The buyers who do best aren’t the ones who time the market perfectly. They’re the ones who stop trying to.
If you want me to run real numbers on a specific home — payment today versus payment if you wait — that’s a fifteen-minute conversation. Let’s have it.
