If you've been waiting for mortgage rates to come back down to where they were in 2021, we want to tell you something, and we're going to be honest about it: they're not coming back. Not this year. Not next year. Probably not at the level you remember.
That's a hard sentence to read. We know. It's been a hard four years to be a buyer.
But it's the most important thing we can say to anyone who's been sitting on the sidelines of the housing market since rates climbed, and almost nobody in our industry seems willing to just say it out loud. So we will. Because pretending otherwise costs people years of their lives — years they could be living in a home they love instead of waiting for a rate environment that, frankly, was an anomaly to begin with.
Let's walk through where we actually are, what the people who move markets are predicting, and — more importantly — what we're seeing real DFW buyers do right now to make the math work without waiting for a miracle.
Where Rates Actually Are Right Now
As of early May 2026, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate is sitting in the mid-6% range. Around 6.4%, give or take a tenth, depending on the week and the lender. A year ago, that same average was closer to 6.8%. Two years ago, almost 7%. So rates have come down a little. But not the way buyers hoped.
The Fed has held its policy rate steady in the 3.50% to 3.75% range for several meetings in a row now. Inflation is stickier than the central bank wants. The 10-year Treasury — which mortgages actually track more closely than the federal funds rate — has been hovering around 4.3%. None of that points to a quick collapse in mortgage rates.
The forecasts coming out of Fannie Mae and the Mortgage Bankers Association now describe rates as "stuck" in the mid-6% range through most of 2026, with a possible drift toward 5.9% sometime in 2027. That's not nothing — but it's not a return to anything close to the 3% world either.
And look. We're not economists. We're builders and realtors. But we read the same reports the analysts read, and the read is pretty consistent: rates have probably found a level. The market is normalizing around it. The question now is what to do inside that normal.
What This Has Done to DFW Prices
Here's a thing that's quietly happened over the last year and a half that almost nobody talks about: DFW prices have actually softened.
The metro-wide median home price is sitting right around $405,000 as of this spring. Fort Worth specifically has come down something like 5% year-over-year. That's not a crash. It's not 2008. It's a market that finally absorbed the reality of 6%+ rates and adjusted to a more honest price.
What that means for you, if you've been waiting on the sidelines: price negotiation is back on the table in a way it absolutely was not three years ago. Sellers are sitting on listings. Days on market have stretched. The buyer who shows up with a real offer, real flexibility, and a real lender now has actual leverage. That was unheard of in 2021. It's the everyday reality of 2026.
In other words: while you've been waiting for rates to drop, prices have been doing some of the work for you.
What Smart Buyers Are Actually Doing
This is the part most of the news coverage misses. Buyers haven't disappeared. They've gotten more creative. Here's what we're seeing close real deals in DFW right now.
The 2-1 buydown is doing a lot of heavy lifting. In a 2-1 structure, the buyer's effective rate is 2 percentage points lower in year one, 1 point lower in year two, and then back to the contracted full rate from year three onward. Often the seller or builder pays for it as a concession instead of dropping the asking price. The buyer gets a meaningfully lower payment for the first two years — sometimes a $700 to $1,000 monthly difference — and uses that window to settle in, build savings, or wait to see if rates drop enough to make a refinance worth it. We see this structure on a huge percentage of new builds and even on resale homes where sellers are motivated.
Permanent buydowns are also having a moment. Less sexy than a temporary buydown, but the math is often better if you're staying put for seven-plus years. You're essentially pre-paying interest to lock in a lower rate for the whole life of the loan. We've had clients do the breakeven math and choose this route specifically because they know they're not moving again for a long time and the savings stack up over thirty years.
