Should I Wait for Mortgage Rates to Drop Before Buying a Home in Denver?

Should I Wait for Mortgage Rates to Drop

We hear this question almost every week now. Should I wait for rates to come down before I buy? The answer I am waiting for is six percent. Or five and a half. Or whatever number feels like permission to move forward.

We understand it. At 7.32% on a 30-year fixed loan, the monthly payment on a median Denver home is genuinely hard to swallow. The instinct to wait for something better is not crazy.

But the buyers who have been waiting since 2022 are still waiting. And the math of what that waiting has cost them is worth looking at honestly.

Should I wait for mortgage rates to drop before buying a home?

Only if you are not financially ready to buy today. If the payment does not work at today’s rate, waiting is the right answer, full stop. But if the payment works and you are waiting because the rate feels high in the abstract, that is a different calculation, and it is one that has not been going well for buyers who have been sitting on the sidelines for the past three years.

Rates were supposed to come down in 2023. Then 2024. Then definitely by mid-2025. Goldman Sachs now forecasts rates easing to around 6.4% by the end of 2027 — meaningful relief, but not dramatic, and over a year away. Nobody has been right about the timeline yet, and nobody can tell you with confidence when the relief actually arrives.

When will mortgage rates go down Denver — why serious buyers are not waiting to find out
Talk to a good lender

What has waiting for rates to drop actually cost Denver buyers?

More than most people realize, and not just in rent.

A buyer who decided to wait in January 2023 when rates hit 6.5%, which felt high at the time, has now watched rates climb past 7% and sit there. They have paid two-plus years of rent that built no equity. And the homes they were looking at in 2023 have not come down enough to offset the rate difference.

The lock-in effect makes this worse. More than 95% of current mortgage holders have rates below today’s market rate. That means most potential sellers are staying put rather than trading into a higher rate on their next home. The result is persistently low inventory of the kind of move-up homes that buyers have been waiting to find. Waiting for rates has not meant waiting for a better selection. In many price ranges it has meant waiting while the selection stayed thin.

The buyers who bought in 2023 and 2024 at rates that felt uncomfortable are now sitting on two or three years of equity gains and, in some cases, have refinancing options that buyers still on the sidelines do not.

What if rates drop significantly after I buy?

Then you refinance. That is what refinancing is for.

This is not a consolation prize. It is a real option, and it is one that buyers who purchased in the last few years have already used. When rates dropped meaningfully in late 2024, the refinance pipeline at lenders across Denver was backed up for weeks because so many people who bought at higher rates moved quickly to lock in lower payments.

The phrase we use with clients is: marry the home, date the rate. The home is the long-term commitment. The rate is what it is today, and it can change. Waiting to find the right home until the rate feels right means potentially missing the home entirely.

When will mortgage rates go down in Denver?

Nobody knows, and anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing.

What Goldman Sachs projects is a gradual easing to around 6.4% by end of 2027  driven partly by the Federal Reserve’s rate path and partly by broader economic conditions. The Fed held its benchmark rate at 3.75% to 4.00% at its October meeting, with sticky inflation running at 3.6% to 3.7% against its 2% target. That is not a picture that points toward dramatic near-term rate cuts.

The more useful question is not when rates will drop, but what you will do when they do. If rates fall to 6% and you are still renting, you will be competing with every buyer who was also waiting in a market that has more demand and potentially less inventory than it does today. The spring 2024 rate dip was a preview of that dynamic. The buyers who were already under contract moved into their homes. The buyers who were waiting for the signal scrambled in a suddenly competitive market.

Is it still a good time to buy a home in Denver even with high rates?

For buyers who can make the payment work, yes, and the current market has advantages that will not last forever.

Denver has 68% more sellers than buyers right now. Homes are sitting longer. Sellers are offering closing cost credits, rate buydowns, and repair concessions that simply were not available two or three years ago. A seller credit toward a rate buydown can move your monthly payment more than the equivalent dollar amount taken off the price and right now, sellers are having that conversation.

Existing home sales nationally just hit their lowest pace since 1995, according to recent data. That sounds like a reason to wait. We would argue it is the opposite. Low transaction volume means less competition for the homes that are available. The buyers who are out there right now are serious and prepared. They are often the only offer on a home that would have had five in 2021.

That window does not stay open indefinitely. When rates ease and demand returns, the negotiating room tightens with it.

Is it a good time to buy a home in Denver — mortgage rates, inventory, and what the math actually says
Houses are still moving in this market

What is the right way to think about buying a home when rates are high?

Start with the payment, not the rate.

Get pre-approved with real numbers. Find out what your monthly payment looks like at today’s rate on the price range you are considering. Decide whether that payment works for your budget if nothing changes — no refinance, no rate drop, just this payment for the life of the loan. If it works, the rate is a secondary consideration. If it does not work, you are not ready yet, and that is a completely legitimate answer.

Then look at what the market is actually offering. In Denver right now, that means motivated sellers, genuine room to negotiate, and the ability to ask for concessions that have not been available in years. A buyer credit toward a rate buydown, in particular, is worth asking about on every offer. It is free to ask, and in this market, sellers are frequently saying yes.

Forty years of watching this market has taught us one consistent truth. The buyers who come out ahead are not the ones who timed it perfectly. They are the ones who bought a home that fit their life, at a payment they could carry, when the market gave them room to negotiate.

Right now, the market is giving buyers room to negotiate.

Our experience. Your legacy.

Contact Legacy 100 Real Estate Partners to run the real numbers on what buying in Denver looks like for your specific situation.

Related reading:

External Links: