Tell me if you’ve heard this one this week: “We’re going to wait until rates come down.”
It arrived the day Freddie Mac reported the 30-year fixed at 7.03 percent, the first reading above 7 percent since January 2025, and it will keep arriving as long as the Fed, which raised its benchmark rate on Sept. 16, keeps leaning toward another increase.
Most agents answer with a chart. The buyer did not say that sentence because they are missing data. They said it because waiting feels safe, and your job is to help them see it is a choice with a price tag that nobody has shown them.
The closer spot
Picture a crowded parking lot at the mall in December. There is an open space at the far end. You can take it and walk 90 seconds, or you can circle the rows looking for one closer to the door.
Everybody has circled, and everybody knows what happens. You pass a decent spot because a better one might open up, and by the time you give up, the decent spot is gone, and you are parking farther out than where you started.
That is the buyer who waits for a lower rate. They are not refusing to park. They are circling, and circling feels like progress because the car is moving. The dialogue below is about getting them to look at the clock and the lot honestly, and then letting them decide.
The mortgage rate scripts for today’s waiting buyers
Start by agreeing, because they are not wrong to want a lower payment.
Agent: “I’d want to wait too, if waiting worked the way we hope it does. Can I ask you a question before we decide anything? What rate would you need to see to feel good about moving forward?”
Buyer: “I don’t know. Six? Five and a half?”
Most buyers have never named the number. Make them say it, and then be honest about what it would take to get there.
Agent: “OK, so about a point and a half. I’m going to tell you the truth, which is that I don’t know when that happens, and nobody who is honest does. Rates are not set by the Fed. They follow the bond market, and the bond market is watching oil prices and inflation. Those are tied to a war overseas. I can’t forecast a war, and I’m not going to pretend I can with your money.”
You just did something most agents are afraid to do. You admitted you do not know. Notice that it makes you more credible, not less. Then show them what waiting has already cost people exactly like them.
Agent: “Here’s what I do know. A year ago the rate was 6.3 percent. A lot of buyers waited last fall because they figured it was heading lower. It went to 7. The ones who waited aren’t in a better spot. They’re in a worse one, and the house they liked is gone. Waiting was a decision. It just didn’t feel like one.”
Buyer: “But if we buy now and rates drop, we’re stuck.”
This is the objection under the objection, and it is where the conversation turns.
Agent: “You’re stuck with the price, not the rate. Those are two different things. If rates come down, we go back to the lender and replace the rate. People do it all the time. What nobody can replace is the purchase price, because that’s set the day you close. So, the question is really this. Which one do you want locked in: the number that can change later or the number that can’t?”
Let them sit with that. Then bring the market in, because this fall the market happens to be on their side.
Agent: “Right now there are fewer buyers out there, which means sellers are negotiating. On price, on closing costs, sometimes on buying your rate down. That leverage exists because of the 7 percent, not in spite of it. If rates fall, the buyers who left come back, creating more buyer demand, and when that happens, sellers stop negotiating. So, the moment you’re waiting for is the moment your bargaining power disappears.”
Realtor.com’s senior economist put it plainly last week: this is the point in the season when leverage usually shifts toward buyers. Your buyer is circling the lot at the one time of year the spaces are opening up.
Make the number small enough to hold
Percentages scare people because a percentage has no size. So, translate it. Bright MLS chief economist Lisa Sturtevant estimates the move from 6.5 to 7 percent adds more than $125 a month on the median-priced home. Run that math on the actual house, out loud.
Agent: “On this house, the difference between the rate you were hoping for and the rate today is about $200 a month. That’s real money, and I’m not going to wave it away. But that’s the whole gap. The question isn’t whether you can afford the rate. It’s whether that gap is worth giving up this house, this price and this seller’s willingness to negotiate.
And look at the other side of it. That $200 a month is $2,400 a year. Every year you own this house, part of your payment comes back to you as equity, and if the house goes up in value at all, that comes back to you too. Nobody can promise you the second part. But even a modest year of either one is more than $2,400. So waiting isn’t free. You’re paying rent to avoid the $200 and getting nothing back for it.”
Then stop talking. A conclusion they reach on their own is worth ten you hand to them.
One more point on this. I bet if you take that $200 a month, multiply it by 12 months, that $2400 more a year they are paying is probably still less than the amount of appreciation they gain by not waiting.
Waiting is not a neutral position. It is a bet that the rate will fall faster than the price and the leverage rise. Make the buyer say the bet out loud.
Serve, don’t sell. Coach, don’t close. The buyer who circles the lot is not being difficult. They are hoping somebody will tell them the truth about the spaces.
The circling buyer is waiting for the lot to change. The parked buyer is already inside the store.
Darryl Davis is the CEO of Darryl Davis Seminars. Get connected on Facebook or YouTube.
