Buyers Stopped Waiting for Rates to Drop, and the Numbers Prove It

For the better part of two years, the advice circulating online has been consistent: wait. Wait for rates to come down, wait for prices to soften, wait for the market to give buyers a break. I hear it from clients constantly, usually right before they tell me they are staying on the sidelines for another few months.

New numbers out of Florida Realtors suggest a lot of buyers already stopped listening to that advice.

Statewide, single-family closed sales rose more than 5 percent from a year earlier in July, the eleventh straight month of year over year gains. New pending sales, which are the best early read on where closed sales head next, climbed for a twelfth consecutive month. Both of those streaks happened while the rate advantage buyers had earlier this year was disappearing. In January and February, mortgage rates sat nearly a full point below where they had been twelve months earlier. That cushion has narrowed considerably since, as rates moved higher through the summer.

So buyers are closing more deals with less of a rate advantage than they had at the start of the year. That is not what the wait and see crowd predicted.

Florida Realtors Chief Economist Dr. Brad O'Connor offered a read on why: a good share of current demand is not coming from people chasing a rate window at all. It is coming from buyers who have made peace with the idea that 2019 level affordability is not returning, and who would rather move forward than keep waiting for a version of the market that is not coming back.

I have lived through four market cycles in 23 years selling real estate in west Broward, and this pattern repeats every time rates climb. Buyers freeze, convinced that patience will be rewarded with a better number later. Sometimes it is. More often, the buyers who wait end up competing for the same handful of listings against buyers who did not wait, while paying a higher price for a home that only got more expensive while everyone else was watching rates instead of watching inventory.

Broward tells the same story in miniature. Total home sales rose for a fifth straight month in July, and single family sales specifically were up nearly 8 percent year over year, even with a 30 year rate that is higher today than it was a month ago. Inventory is part of the explanation. Active listings across the county were down almost 19 percent from a year earlier at the end of July, which means the buyers who are moving now are competing for fewer homes than they were competing for last summer.

None of this means rates do not matter. They do, and locking in the best rate available to you is always worth the effort. What the data argues against is treating a lower rate as a condition that has to be met before you are allowed to buy. The buyers closing deals in Davie, Weston, and the rest of west Broward this summer decided the home mattered more than the rate they wished they had. Twelve months from now, most of them will refinance if rates drop, and none of them will have lost the home they wanted while they waited to find out.

If you have been holding off for a signal that rates are about to cooperate, I would rather walk you through what is actually happening in your specific price range and neighborhood than have you guess from a national headline. That conversation costs nothing and it beats waiting on a number that may not move the way anyone expects.

Roger Averbuj, Broker | Prestige Heritage Realty | (954) 663-8461

Source: Florida Realtors, "Florida buyers move ahead without waiting on mortgage rates," August 18, 2026